Thursday marks the 30th day of the federal government shutdown and the American public has grown more concerned about the shutdown throughout the month and more disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the federal government, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.
More Americans blame Trump and the Republicans in Congress than the Democrats for the shutdown, the poll finds.
Here’s the really bonkers thing: the actual budget is passed, they know exactly how much is meant for each agency. What’s been held up is actually putting that money in the account and authotizing the spending of it. We could have combined the two, and appropriated money in the same act that budgeted it. But we separate them, on purpose, to give the politicians more steps to negotiate things.
As far as I can tell, we are the only large country that separates budgets and appropriations like this. In most other countries, failure to fully fund the government would be seen as a sign of weakness in the government. But here, we have one party whose core mission is to shrink the size of Federal government. Conservatives here think that failing to fund the government shows strength.
wow that’s actually wildly fucked
in australia it’s not just a sign of weakness, it’s the end of your government. if you fail to pass a budget, basically the governor general (the crowns representative in australia) dismisses the government, appoints an interim government, and fresh elections are called as soon as possible
there are a few more options than this, but they all kinda amount to the same thing