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DIVERS ENGLISH ARTICLE

Février 2019 13

QUICK GUIDE TO HOW TO HANDLE THE SHUTDOWN

It has been now 24 days since the US Government “ Shutdown” is active, consequence of a disagreement between the Democrat Party and Donald Trump on the economic allocations for the year to come. This disagreement is currently damaging the great nation that are the United States of America. With this decision, the POTUS leaves around 800.000 government workers employed but for free since the economic budget isn’t set.

But clearly, what is this disagreement based on ? And what are the possible endings at this issue ?

Firstly, let’s explain what is a shutdown : the US Government Shutdown tend to occur when the President, and one or both of the Chambers of the Congress ( Congress = House of Representatives + Senate ) are unable to resolve disagreements over the budget allocations before the current budget cycle ends. It is a political issue that only happens in the United States of America, because of their democratic regime which is a presidential regime which gives a lot of power to the President of the Nation. For example, this cannot take place in any European countries because most of them are parliamentary regimes which is a regime in which the President is less powerful and must be approved by the Parliament, because it can remove him for political reasons which isn’t the case in America, where the POTUS can only be removed if he infringed the law.

The current shutdown isn’t the first Shutdown to take place in modern American History. In fact, there have been 10 Shutdowns between 1960 and 2019. Many of them were really short and did not end with major issues or problems, except one, which occured in 1995-1996, under Bill Clinton’s presidency. This one lasted 23 days, concerned around 284.000 federal workers and cost around $400 millions to the US Government. This was the longest Shutdown in American history, until January 14th which, 24th Shutdown day of Trump’s presidency.

This Shutdown is due to Trump’s willpower of building his border Wall, on all the frontier which cost is evaluated to $5 billion in funding for his long-promised wall at the US-Mexico border. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York have refused to meet that demand, instead offering a far smaller sum to shore up border security and asking the President to reopen the government now and negotiate on border security later. Trump has rejected their offers, leading to an impasse that no one seems able to break. Unhappy of the Democrats’ answer, the President plans to decree an Emergency State in the United States, which would allow him to get his funds in order to build his Wall.

From the Democrats stand point, building this wall would represent a massive paycheck to refund in a project which isn’t that valuable, considering that, currently are there patrols along the Southern frontier, specially equipped for anti-immigration means, and that at some points which are considered as major breaking points, are there multiple layers of barbed wire and more. Also did they write a decree that says that they would refund unpaid workers once the Shutdown is ended and negotiated in the order of the Nation.

Despite that, attempts at negotiation between lawmakers and the administration this week appeared to do nothing to move both sides any closer to a resolution,as of now, common stories about the daily critic life of unpaid government workers are fulfilling the written press and the breaking news on information channels such as CNN, ABC or Fox News. But, meanwhile, the Democratic-controlled House passed a series of spending bills to reopen shuttered parts of the government over the course of the week, but the legislation does not include any new money for a border wall. As a result, the House bills faced a White House veto threat and stand no chance of being taken up in the Senate since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said he will not hold votes on legislation related to the shutdown that the President will not sign.

But after 35 days, both the POTUS and House of Representatives finally agreed to stop the Shutdown for 3 weeks, giving them time to rethink the budget and the important question mark which is the 5 billion dollars that Trump wants to invest into his Border Wall, even though there already is barbed wire at the emphasis points of migration. This Shutdown also led to several costs whether financial, economical or social.

LABARUSSIAS Arthur