The Republican RightWingNuts appear in ALL respects to WANT the shutdown…..
They will NOT bend….
Democrats are standing on the sidelines….
House Speaker , Republican McCarthy is hanging in the wind….
Meanwhile?
The Biden admin IS beginning to set the stage for the shutdown of services for a unknown time and furloughs of employee’s….
“During this time, some of you will be temporarily furloughed while others who perform excepted functions will continue to execute your assigned duties,” read one of the notices, sent to employees at the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by The Washington Post….
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A shutdown would force the government to pare back to only its most vital functions. The resulting disruptions are likely to be significant, especially if the stalemate persists for weeks, potentially dragging down the fragile U.S. economy while complicating many of the services on which millions of Americans and businesses rely.
Some federal programs, including Social Security and mail delivery, would be unaffected, because they are funded outside of the annual appropriations process on Capitol Hill. But many other government operations would be rendered inaccessible if funds expire — resulting in closed parks and passport offices, and worrisome interruptions affecting federal housing, food and health aid for the poor….
House Republicans in Biden country….
As right-wing lawmakers take Congress to the brink of a government closure for which their party would almost certainly bear the blame, dozens of Republicans — particularly those like Mr. Lawler who represent districts won by President Biden — are toiling to head off the backlash from voters for the chaos sown by some of the most extreme members of the G.O.P.
“Especially in a divided government, we’re going to have to find compromise. We’re going to have to find areas of agreement,” Mr. Lawler said in an interview. “And for the handful of people that are unwilling to do that, it’s frankly destructive to the country and really harmful to the American people.”
Mr. Lawler is one of 18 House Republicans representing a district that voted for Mr. Biden, meaning that he must appeal to constituents ranging from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump to independents like Ms. Catalino and centrist Democrats. Before him, the seat had not been held by a Republican for more than two decades. And Mr. Lawler is expected to face a tough re-election race in 2024 as Democrats aim to wrench the seat back.
At the town hall and on cable news shows over the past week, Mr. Lawler has emphasized his opposition to a shutdown and his efforts to bring a bipartisan spending patch to the floor. He has told his swing-district constituents that the government is hurtling toward a closure at midnight on Saturday because a handful of G.O.P. hard-liners have stood in the way of government funding while he and other Republicans were working to extend it.
“Apparently, he’s willing to work with other people and other parties,” Eric Eckley, another of those constituents, said outside the town hall. “But that doesn’t answer the question of why the people in his party are not willing to run our government.”…
Some of the economic data the shutdown would effect….
A short shutdown, similar to the one a decade ago, would delay data releases but probably wouldn’t do much longer-term damage. Data for the September jobs report, for example, has already been collected; it would take government statisticians only a few days to finalize the report and release it after the government reopened. In that situation, most major statistics would probably be updated by the time the Fed next meets on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.
But the longer a shutdown goes on, the more lasting the potential damage. Labor force statistics, for example, are based on a survey conducted in the middle of each month — if the government doesn’t reopen in time to conduct the October survey on schedule, the resulting data could be less accurate, as respondents struggle to recall what they were doing weeks earlier. Other data, such as information on consumer prices, could be all but impossible to recover after the fact…