No Winners, Only Losers

The fight between the Republican and Democratic Party in the U.S. has resulted in them being unable to reach a consensus on the budget proposal for the new fiscal year. This has caused the federal government to shut down because of a lack of funds. More than 800,000 civil servants have been forced to take unpaid leave, thereby affecting peoples’ lives.

However, this disaster is only just beginning. If the two parties continue fighting and Congress is unable to raise the debt ceiling, the government will have no money to pay its debts and will face a debt default, which may bring a “disastrous result.”

This result may be one that neither party is able to bear.

The fight between the two parties is a long-running one, and this is not the first time that one party has used a man-made crisis to force the other to compromise. This time, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has used the budget as a bargaining chip and is threatening Obama with it to delay the implementation of “Obamacare.” But because “Obamacare” is President Obama’s most important achievement, of course, he and the Democratic Party are refusing to budge, slamming the way Republicans bundled the budget and “Obamacare” and likening it to blackmail.

The Longer the Delay, the Bigger the Impact

Obama has taken a hard stance, stating that unless Republicans compromise, there will be no negotiations. Obama is not under pressure to stay in office for another term and does not have to worry about losing votes, so he can go “all in” to protect his achievements.

Besides, Obama believes that the chip in his hand is much stronger than that of the Republicans. Currently, mainstream U.S. opinion polls show that the majority of the people place more blame on the Republican Party for the shutdown. If the Republican Party is insistent on preventing Congress from allowing the debt ceiling to be raised, the party will have to bear the responsibility of causing an economic meltdown, which would be the equivalent of political suicide. Not only will they lose control of the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections, but they would very likely damage their chances in the next presidential race.

Republicans virtually have no choice. All they can do now is stall and put pressure on Democrats in exchange for a little compromise.

This is because for every extra day the government remains shut down, an extra day’s damage is done.

The last government shutdown was during the time of the Clinton administration. In 1996, the government shutdown for 21 days and suffered an economic loss of $1.4 billion — about 4.4 billion Yuan. However, the U.S. economy at the time was not so bad and managed to pull through.

However, this time it is different. The U.S. has not completely left the recession of the 2008 financial crisis behind: How big of an impact can it have?

This time, experts predict that one week of government shutdown may cause up to $5 billion — about 15.9 billion Yuan — in economic losses. In this economy, the government shutdown is another blow to an already weak economy. The longer it takes, the larger and more damaging the force of the impact. This fact is not unknown to Obama.

This political tussle will not have a winner in the end, whether Democratic or Republican. The people, however, will have lost for no clear reason.