By  Thu Apr 7, 2011

Government Shutdown 2011: Disagreements on Resolution

Despite late night discussions over the 2011 fiscal year budget, lawmakers have still been unable to reach an agreement that can prevent a complete shutdown of the federal government.

President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met late last night in an effort to reach a consensus over the federal budget, though no official resolution came out of those talks. All three leaders will now meet today for the third time this week in an effort avert a potential government shutdown.

“A shutdown could have real effects on everyday Americans,” said Obama in a statement he delivered shortly after his meeting with both heads of Congress. ” That means that small business owners who are counting on that loan to open their business, to make payroll, to expand, suddenly they can’t do it. It means folks who are potentially processing a mortgage, they may not be able to get it.  It means that hundreds of thousands of workers across the country suddenly are without a paycheck.  Their families are counting on them being able to go to work and do a good job.” President Obama added in his speech that a shutdown could result in delays in the receipt of business loans and payroll for small business, or even the processing of mortgages.

While President Obama did express confidence in his administration and Congress to agree on a budget resolution before Friday’s deadline in his speech, Sen. Reid reportedly told some this morning that he was “not nearly as optimistic” about reaching a resolution over the federal budget as he had been last night, according to Bloomberg News.

Depending on its length, a shutdown of the federal government could have significant effects on basic services, like a delay in the receipt of tax refunds or the shutdown of national parks. Some 800,000 federal workers are also at risk of being furloughed in the event a federal government shuts down. If lawmakers were to pass a budget for the fiscal year 2011 it would be the first time a federal budget has been passed since the fiscal year 2010.

You can check out President Barack Obama’s full statement below:


Check out: Government Shutdown 2011 Put on Hold

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  • Jack Son

    Nobody has successfuly explained exactly how disagreement over NEXT YEAR’S budget affects the current fiscal year’s budget in order to cause a “government shutdown”.

    We are in Fiscal Year 2011, which started on October 1st, 2010. That budget was agreed upon LAST YEAR. The funding and allocations are already done.

    We are talking about a debate over the budget which will REPLACE this current one when it ends on September 30th 2011. How are these extremists using an impasse over NEXT YEAR’S budget to stop current funding for a budget agreed upon over a year ago? I don’t understand the legislative loophole they are using.

  • Jack Son

    I realize it’s not as simple as each agency, department, or program getting a check at the beginning of the fiscal year, in order to operate for the entire year, but that’s basically the idea.

    My father commanded an Army Depot within the Defense Distribution System in the 80′s. Every September 30th, they threw a “Fiscal New Year” party to spend the little bit of remaining Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) funds, in order to preserve the budget levels for subsequent years. Not to be wasteful, but to protect against losing hard fought funding due to minor fluctuations. “Use it or lose it”.

    Nobody has explained how failing to agree upon the 2012 budget, which won’t take affect until October 1st, 2011, can affect CURRENT FUNDING.

    I’m still trying to figure out how the media hasn’t explained it, other than the fact that all media, Fox, CNN, et al, are owned by the very corporations who need to keep us in the dark and beholden to the divide and conquer two-party system. I mean, we aren’t supposed to question the two-party system, we are supposed to be opposed to one of the parties, and loyal to the other. Even though they work in concert to support thier corporate masters.

  • Jack Son

    I just found this on wikipedia, and I’m amazed by what it says. Apparently, the 2011 budget was not approved, and they’ve been operating on “a series of continuing resolutions”.

    This just proves that the two parties work together. Why wouldn’t a democrat controlled congress and senate approve a democrat president’s budget? Unless they work with the republicans to create this conflict paradigm??

    They are working to destroy our country, so the bankers and corporatists can get rid of all of our laws, labor protections, safety nets, and every other lesson we’ve learned over the years. They just want a world where all the uneducated people will work for them at low wages, without asking questions. Us middle class people need to either shut up or go away.

    Since I don’t watch Fox News of CNN, I haven’t been slowly brought into their rationalizations. I just know what is right. There are labor laws that are there for a good reason. We don’t need to sympathize with the corporatists who are worth a billion plus dollars when they tell us how it’s evil that the worker doesn’t want to work in shitty conditions, or how the unions are breaking the back of the corporations, when the same corporations pay ZERO taxes on tens of billions of profits.

    We are all suckers. They own both parties, and they own the media, and our cable TV, and our newspapers. They OWN US!

  • Jack Son

    From Wikipeia:

    The United States Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2011, is a spending request by President Barack Obama to fund government operations for October 2010–September 2011[1][2]. Figures shown in the spending request do not reflect the actual appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011, which must be authorized by Congress. The budget did not pass by the September 30 deadline, and the government has been funded by a series of six continuing resolutions continuing funding at or near 2010 levels, the most recent of which expires on April 8, 2011.

    A government shutdown on April 8, 2011 is possible if a budget resolution or a seventh continuing resolution is not passed by that date.[3] This could cause the furlough of 800,000 out of 2 million civilian federal employees.[4][5]

  • Jack Son

    Funny how a fiscal year budget suddenly operates on “continuing resolutions”, instead of being approved outright, when Clinton and Obama are presidents.

    I guess they know their job is to be the “weak” socialist democrats.

    When a “strong” republican is in office, the budgets get approved, regardless of which party has the majority in the legislature.

    I guess we voters are just going to have to deal with the fact that we are subjects, royal servants who either hate this party or that, or love that party or the other.

    Fealty is due, and those of us who fail to make our pledge of allegiance to either party deserve to lose our rights or jobs and should be considered un-american. As un-american as Obama is supposedly.