The United States government has just shut down, which means Congress hasn’t passed a budget bill in time for the next fiscal year. This leads to the temporary cutting of hundreds of thousands of jobs. If the shutdown continues, federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) could be cut until the situation is resolved. 

A government shutdown happens when Congress doesn’t pass legislation to fund the federal government by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. The last government shutdown was in Dec. 2018 and it was the result of differing opinions on the US-Mexico border. This shutdown lasted for 34 days, the longest shutdown in the history of the United States. 

The current shutdown is happening because government assistance from the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is set to end. Obamacare lowers the price of healthcare and medicine for low and middle-income people. If the programs under it expire, it will raise the price of healthcare for millions of Americans. 

According to Carl Hulse of the New York Times, democrats have a strong stance in Congress because millions of Americans are expected to pay more for healthcare unless federal subsidies under Obamacare are extended. Democrats want the Trump administration to continue the assistance and believe that the shutdown will help them get what they want. 

According to Madeleine Ngo of the New York Times, Access to WIC could be affected because the program won’t have the funding to accept new applicants. Later in the same article, Ngo explains how, during the last shutdown, power, water treatment and chemical plant inspections were disturbed due to the furloughing of almost 90 percent of Environmental Protection Agency employees. Without these inspections, these plants could’ve been shut down, and if the current shutdown doesn’t end soon, important plants could fall to the same fate.

To end the shutdown, 60 percent of the Senate has to vote in favor of a new budget bill or a continuing resolution, which temporarily extends the current bill.  Republicans have 53 out of the 100 senators, so to get anything related to the federal budget passed, they need 7 non-republican senators to vote yes on a new budget bill. Democrats and Republicans must compromise to end the shutdown before more American lives are impacted.