US Government shuts down

So anything that is run by the government will have to temporarily lay off "non-essential" personnel. So anything that uses tax payer's money to fund it is government run. There are so many services that the list is quite long. An interesting fact though is the senators and house representatives continue to get paid, but their staff who are still working do not...

 

The debt ceiling is a limit on how much debt we can acquire, not necessarily how much we can spend. So congress can, and does, contract out for a lot of different things when they pass the budget. When these people come to the government to get paid for doing X for them, the government often borrows money to pay them. The debt limit doesn't prevent the budget from being passed, only prevents the government from borrowing the money to pay their bills.

It's like a credit card limit. You can still go out and eat even if your credit card is over the limit, you just can't pay for it.

If the time comes when we're about to hit the debt ceiling, and it isn't raised then we'll have to not pay some things we agreed to pay.

It actually can last for forever. However, the 17th is a huge date because if we don't come to an agreement by then, the U.S. will default on its loans and it looks extremely bad for the president and everyone else. Hitting the debt ceiling doesn't completely end the world. It means you aren't allowed to borrow money. Therefore, someone will cave before this time.

 

It's an idiotic law. Congress has to approve us taking on debt. They used to only due that on a case by case basis. Then in 1917 they just said that you can borrow but only up to whatever we set the debt ceiling to. So basically, Congress sets the amount of spending and they set how much we can borrow and if they don't raise the debt ceiling to match what they said we would borrow, bad things will happen. It's really just a political law.

 

It really highlights how ridiculous our government is..