Follow U.S. Immigration and U.S. Current Affairs: The U.S. Congress, including both the Senate and the House of Representatives, passed a bill on the evening of the 16th to provide operating funds for federal agencies until January 15 of next year and to extend the Treasury Department's authority to issue national debt until February 7. This means that the first federal government "shutdown" in 17 years is coming to an end, and the U.S. debt "bomb" has been defused in time.
With the government "shutdown" entering its 16th day and only one day away from a U.S. debt default, both houses of Congress worked "overtime" to pass this bill, paving the way for the government to "reopen" the next morning. Following the Senate's initial passage of the bill, the House of Representatives passed it the same day with a vote of 285 in favor and 144 against. The bill will take effect after being signed by President Obama.
The bill directs the Senate and House to form a budget committee to negotiate long-term government budget issues, with an agreement to be reached by December of this year at the latest. This means that while this round of fiscal crisis has just been resolved, Capitol Hill will soon face a new round of budget battles.
The bill does not contain provisions to "delay" or "repeal" the core content of the Affordable Care Act, indicating that the healthcare reform act has "survived" this round of partisan maneuvering. The Democratic Party has emerged as the "winner," while the Republican Party is seen by the U.S. media as the "loser."
After the government "shutdown," both the Senate and the House successively proposed several plans aimed at resolving the fiscal deadlock, but they failed to reach a compromise. The bill passed that day came from a 14-member Senate negotiation group led by Senate Democratic Leader Reid and Republican Leader McConnell. Since the 12th, this group had been negotiating on the debt ceiling and the government "reopening" issue, and finally reached a consensus on the morning of the 16th. Due to serious internal divisions within the House of Representatives, which could not produce its own version of a debt ceiling plan, and with the U.S. debt "deadline" counting down, the House had no choice but to accept this bill to defuse the U.S. debt "time bomb" alert.
Speaker of the House Boehner stated on the 16th that the Republican Party had been trying to reduce the scale of the government budget and firmly opposed the Affordable Care Act, adding, "We fought a good fight, we just didn't win."
Although the 16-day government "shutdown" did not exceed the 21-day record of a government "shutdown" during the Clinton administration, it had more serious economic and social impacts because it was intertwined with the U.S. debt ceiling issue. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, citing analysis by economists, stated that the government "shutdown" could drag down the fourth-quarter economic growth rate by as much as 1.5 percentage points. During the "shutdown," 800,000 federal employees were forced to take leave, and President Obama canceled his visits to Indonesia and Brunei, and missed the APEC summit, the U.S.-ASEAN summit, and the East Asia Summit. The repeated delays in the debt ceiling issue triggered concerns from many countries around the world for several consecutive days, and Fitch Ratings placed the United States' "AAA" sovereign credit rating on negative watch.
The U.S. government has repeatedly staged "shutdown" farces and U.S. debt crises, and these crises have tended to intensify in recent years. Some analysts say that the recurring alerts mean that the efficiency of Congress is becoming lower and lower, and it is increasingly becoming an institution that cannot or finds it difficult to solve major problems.