US shutdown: Tales of the impact begin to emerge

Despite President Barack Obama’s pleas for a stopgap budget to be passed including the critical debt-ceiling increase, there is no indication of the stalemate ending yet. As over 8,00,000 federal government employees in the US remain furloughed, tales emerged of employees struggling with maxed-out credit cards and only a few days’ pay to get by. Obama’s spokespersons reiterated that he would hold his ground, with observers agreeing that the White House appears to hold the strategic advantage with pre-shutdown polls indicating that Republicans were being more roundly blamed for the impasse than the President. [caption id=“attachment_115002” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  An earlier protest on US debt.[/caption] Meanwhile, some unexpected outcomes of the shutdown began to emerge. The Politico reports that the five military service academies run by the federal government have either cut down classes drastically or have closed down altogether, dependent as they are on both military and civilian faculty members. At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, those taking courses cannot use reference material in the library. The library is open, military staff members at work, but there’s no reference assistance. The 4,400 cadets at the Air Force Academy now have no library, media lab or tutoring centers. Meanwhile, t he Washington Post reported that at least 100 lawmakers had declared that they would not accept pay, in a show of support to furloughed government employees who have no guarantee of back-pay. The Washington Post began publishing a list of such lawmakers online. In other news, the Director of National Intelligence James R Clapper Jr reportedly admitted that intelligence gathering was hit by the shutdown. About 70 percent of intelligence agencies’ civilian staff has been furloughed, reported New York Times. At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Clapper said the situation in which employees not working on anything of immediate significance had to be furloughed was “extremely damaging”. “Each day that goes by,” he said, “the jeopardy increases.”   Other things that were hit by the shutdown include the probe into an airline crash in California on Sunday, while the Newseum, a privately-run archive-collection of news media, saw double its usual footfalls. With their office staff mostly furloughed, senators were losing feedback from constituencies too. Some senators began to finally start answering their phones themselves, in the absence of support staff. “By God, I said the hell with it. We’re going to answer the phones,” one senator told Politico. “When those meetings are over I grab the phones.”