With our government recently shutting down and confusion running rampant in our country, one has to stop and ask, “What is really going on here?” The simple answer to this complicated problem is as follows: America is at war. We are not engaging the military forces of other nations, nor are we troubled with a civil war. The fact is, our own government is on the offense against itself. Our country’s federal government is composed of several distinct branches who all require annual funding in order to continue operation. Congress is in charge of agreeing upon how each agency is funded and when they cannot come to a resolution, they are forced to shut down. Unable to agree upon a single budget plan, Congress has shoved us into the situation we currently face.

To be more specific, Congress has to agree upon 12 appropriation bills to fund federal agencies and to set spending priorities. However, in recent years, Congress has resorted to stopgap budgets otherwise known as continuing resolutions where the government resorts to using temporary solution to solve our long term problems. Theoretically, they can pass another stopgap but several points of conflict have stopped them from doing such. The Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House are at a crossroads at to what that stopgap should look like and after several votes that failed to produce an agreement, we are now getting a shutdown.

Sure the government is currently shutdown, but what exactly does that entail? Well, federally funded agencies have split their employees into groups and labeled as either “essential” or “non-essential”. Essential employees are necessary in the operation of the country and must be kept around in order to make sure that our nation continues to run as it always has. Although they are fortunate enough to keep their jobs, they won’t be paid for their services until much later when the government has been set back in order. On the other hand, people who were marked as non-essential were left with no other option but to pack their things and find employment elsewhere as the government shutdown didn’t leave enough behind to cover for their paychecks. Altogether, it has been estimated that over 800,000 people marked as non-essential have already been stripped of a job and sent home with the possibility of that number continuing to grew even larger.

With people losing their jobs left and right and many federal services shutting down for an indefinite amount of time, there is little that we are still left with. The government shutdown will affect all of us to a lesser or greater effect if it hasn’t done so already. There simply isn’t a way around it. Congress’ lack of communication has cost us dearly and now, we are tasked with the duty of waiting it out until the end. Only time will come to show if the shutdown had in any way affected Congress’ budget plans, and whether the troubles we put ourselves in today will have been worth the wait tomorrow.