Government Shutdown

Growing up in America today, one might formulate an image of a U.S. Senator or Congressman as a dignified statesman, willing to reason and compromise with colleagues from the other side of the aisle in an effort to improve the wellbeing of the country. This is largely due to historical representations of the Founders and subsequent important figures learned in elementary and middle school courses, as well as depictions found in various classic movies and television shows. However, upon reaching the age at which newspapers and serious newscasts become interesting to us, we soon realize that these representations are quite false. Indeed, today, the lack of willingness to compromise on any number of important issues has led to unprecedented gridlock …show more content…
The possibility of a government shutdown was increasing by the day, and on September twenty-ninth two-thousand thirteen Congress was becoming frantic. Their job was to create a budget for the two-thousand fourteen fiscal year. The main issue was that the republicans wanted to defund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, while the democrats refused to sign off on the budget if the Affordable Care Act is affected. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, stated “I want to be absolutely crystal clear: Any bill that defunds Obamacare is dead, dead.” After two whole day of back-and-forth between the House and Senate, on Tuesday, October first two-thousand thirteen, at one in the morning the Federal government shutdown. As a result, eight-hundred thousand federal employees were placed on furlough, mandatory time off without pay, indefinitely. Over one million federal employees were forced to show up to work without knowing when they will get paid, theses employees worked for services that were deemed essential, medicare, mail delivery, tax collection and the military, all other federal services were shut down. These conditions lasted until Thursday, October seventeenth two-thousand thirteen. In the end, the republicans had to give in due to the inability to fund another day of the Federal Government. With a Senate vote of …show more content…
The first being having the Speaker of the House be an outsider, rather than a member. Based on Article one section two clause five of the United States Constitution, that states “The House of Representatives shall chuse (sic) their Speaker and other Officers.", the House does not have to choose a member of the majority to be the speaker, despite that being the tradition. The way this would run smoothly would be if the chosen person was someone who was respected by both parties. The reason being, though the Speaker does not usually vote or participate in debates, if they had to their decision wouldn’t be based solely on their party loyalty. If he was an active participant in politics rather than just a commentator, I believe that David Brooks would be perfect for the job. His title is a republican but he is highly respected by democrats. The second possible solution would be to make it mandatory that the Rules Committee membership have equal parts democrats and republicans. The Rules Committee’s job is to consider bills and determine whether and in what order to schedule a bills consideration on the House floor. If there were equal membership, both would have to have to be satisfied before the piece of legislation was brought to the floor, which naturally creates compromise. (“Wrestling