Already, and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the third of October.
I'm Sam Kazowski, I'm Billy fit Simon's wait before we get into the deep dive. Yeah, it's a big day, third of October.
Third of October. It's two days before my mum's sixtieth birthday.
And Taylor Swift is also dropping an album today. And it's the Mean Girl's Meme Day, which.
Means that most of tda's office will not do any work today.
No, wait, do you know what I'm saying when I say the Mean Girl's Meme.
Day that it's a date mentioned in the diary. And yeah, girls, pretty much, I'm up with it.
Big day, big day for the girls.
Big day. And I'm sorry to kind of change the tone of this conversation, but we're talking about US politics. It's a big day for US politics, not as exciting as a new Taylor Swift album. And that's because the US government is shut down, and it's shut down Congress failed to pass funding legislation. It's the twenty first shutdown since nineteen seventy seven, and it has triggered the indefinite pause of most federal services, putting tens of thousands of
federal employees out of work. On today's podcast, we're not going to talk about the new Taylor Swift album. Instead, we're going to break down what a shutdown actually means, how an entire government can just stop, and why this one might be different from past shutdowns. Before we jump into all of that, here's a message from our sponsor.
Sam. When I first saw this story, my first thought was not again, because I feel like this happens every single year. But then I just realized that there's kind of talk about it happening, or there's a threat of it happening exactly, but this time it's actually come to fruition. We're here, we are here. My understanding is that it all centers around the budget. Do you want to explain exactly what this process is?
Sure, So, the US government operates on a fiscal year that runs from the first of October to the thirtieth of September the following year, and towards the end of each fiscal year, Congress needs to pass legislation to fund federal operations for the next year. So a tick of approval on the money that federal operations such as the military, but also the National Park Service or a lot of
the health authorities in the country need to function. And all of this starts in February, and that's when the President usually proposes the budget and then he sends it to Congress to review it. Just like in Australia, the budget is a political reflection of what the priorities are of that government or the president and almost always the two sides, so the Republicans and the Democrats, they're going to disagree on some measures and that's when they enter
a period of negotiation. And that period between February and September, so you know, a good chunk fifty percent of the time spent is on making sure the next year's budget is approved. But if they can't reach an agreement by the thirtieth of September, they've got two options really ahead of them. They can either pass what's called a continuing resolution or a CR. It's basically a band aid. It's basically saying let's give enough funding for like thirty or
sixty days so that we can keep negotiating. Or they can shut the government down.
Right and so this time, they shut the government down because they couldn't agree exactly.
They couldn't not only could they not agree on the federal budget, they couldn't agree on the terms of that continuing resolution either, right, And what happens then is the government shuts down literally at midnight on the first of October. They don't have money that's been approved by Congress to operate and they have to see non essential operations. That's a shutdown. And that's where we are right now.
You've mentioned Congress a few times. In Australia, we don't have Congress, So do you want to just explain exactly what that is, because it's critical to understanding how this has happened.
In many ways, it is similar to the Australian model. It's different in terms of the leader of the country being the president is not in Congress, whereas here Anthony Alberanezi as a Prime Minister, would be the leader of the House of Reps. But Congress has two chambers just like us. They've got the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the House of Representatives, a party needs two hundred and eighteen votes to pass a bill before it can be sent up to the Senate right now, the Republicans
have a majority by one. They've got two hundred and nineteen seats, the Democrats have two hundred and thirteen, and there's three spots that are vacant. And in the Senate, most bills need fifty one votes to pass. It's one hundred seats in the Senate, but spending bills like a budget needs sixty votes. Now, the problem is that the Republicans have fifty three seats there, so they've got enough to pass another bill, but when it comes to budgetary bills,
they don't have enough. They actually need the support of seven Democrats. The Democrats have forty seven seats, then there's two independents, and that's where things have fallen down.
Got it. So the budget was able to pass the House because they passed the House control the House exactly, But then it wasn't able to pass the Senate because even though they have a majority there, they don't have enough of a majority to pass.
A budget exactly. And that's where that negotiation point I made earlier really came into play. Is the Democrats basically said, we will support the passage of this budget through the Senate if you give us AB and C. The Republicans couldn't meet those demands, and that's where things fell apart.
And so what happens during a shutdown, like do people just stop working?
Well, a chunk of the federal government stops operating. About twenty five percent of the federal government completely stops. I think the National Park Service is a really interesting one. So these are the employees who would sit at a boomgate of cars looking to enter a national park, or they'd be working on sustainability measures in the park safety that's not seen as an essential service, So those people
are immediately furloughed or cush essentially. The other seventy five percent continues, and we're talking there about things like air traffic control security and airport police ambulances, that kind of stuff. They continue, but employees don't get paid.
So they're required to rock up to work, but they know that they might not be paid for that for a while until this budget.
Goes through exactly. So they're back paid when the budget does eventually go through. They're paid for all of their time. But the twenty five percent that is kind of dismissed on the spot. We're talking there about four million federal employees.
That's a lot. So four million people who no longer work and suddenly wake up knowing that they don't have a paycheck coming.
Yeah, and it's a bit more complicated than that in terms of most of these shutdowns are resolved in a couple of days, and these people are immediately rehired and there's a gap where they weren't covered. But then it's kind of business as usual. But it can get really messy.
I mean there are non essential federal employees who may suddenly have to use food services, or there's stories about kids being withdrawn from school because parents who are non essential employees can't afford petrol to get in their car. Then there's also stories of like military personnel who are told to continue working but may go a full month without a paycheck.
Okay, so I understand what happens during the shutdown. One thing that I think we've kind of skimmed over is what actually led to this and what in particular, the Democrats and the Republicans aren't agreeing on that has meant that this shutdown has happened.
So the Republican controlled House, they passed that continuing resolution. I spoke about the band Aid they passed that in September that would have given everybody funding until the end of November, and we got some clues in that as to what the key issues were. And essentially we're talking here about probably two primary issues. One is the bucket
of healthcare, the very complex bucket of healthcare. In the UA, Democrats essentially wanted temporary healthcare subsidies introduced under former President Barack Obama. You might have heard the term Obamacare. So those were temporary subsidies that are about to expire, and Democrats wanted to make them permanent subsidies. Republicans opposed this. They said that this would really ramp up the cost of the American healthcare system. Who pays for the system
its taxpayers. That would put pressure on cost of living. Then there's also some proposed cuts by the Republicans to particular health agencies. The new head of America's health system, RFK Junior, has some controversial policies on things like vaccines or the treatment of some infectious diseases. Then a third problem in healthcare is the availability of healthcare to undocumented migrants.
Then you have another topic of presidential authority. And this won't surprise people listening, but Democrats wanted to restrict the president's ability to withhold funding for programs that had already been approved by Congress. So an example would be an eighteen billion dollar infrastructure program for New York that would have upgraded trains around the city of New York City that passed Congress, and then President Trump used his powers
to defund that program. So Democrats wanted to remove that power to do that to programs that have been approved. Republicans said that we need to look to the Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court recently ruled that that's okay to do and that executive control, according to the Constitution, needs to stay with the president.
What I think is interesting is, you know, America is so divided politically, and the fact that they do need to negotiate on these points that are so fraught between the two parties, it's almost surprising to me that this doesn't happen more.
Well, I feel like there's so much money in that budget that both sides will often find ways to make
each other happy. Yes, and to you know, you give a little bit of leniency over here in healthcare, will make sure that there's more in defense of the southern bar and there's this big kind of to and fro process because both parties know that eventually the other one will be in power, and so there's also a bit of kind of a favor system and the negotiation system of some of these politicians have been working together for thirty forty years, so they have the trust to be
able to build a negotiated budget together.
What have passed shutdowns been like, because, like you said at the top, this isn't the first time it's happened.
Yeah, well, I was reading. I think every president maybe except one since the seventies has had a shutdown. Some are a couple of days. The longest one in history was thirty five days, and that was in twenty eighteen, and in that scenario, three hundred thousand federal workers were furloughed, so they were dismissed, and they were totally unpaid in that period. Usually a federal government shutdown is seen as this really negative thing by both Republicans and Democrats, and
so it's normally resolved pretty quickly. Neither party want to answer to their constituents of why am I out of work? Why can't I access public resources? And so thirty five days was pretty long, and I think the second longest was in the twenties, so that was a rarity in itself. Analysts say that we could be headed towards the thirty five day mark and even beyond.
Really, yeah, so we think that this is going to go on for a long time.
Yeah. And the phrase that a lot of US media outlets are using is that this shutdown feels different. Well, the reason really is the way that the Trump administration is talking about the shutdown. The president sets the tone, especially for the Republicans who control the House and control the Senate. He's positioning it as a way to actually permanently close some of the federal agencies that his administration has been talking about wanting to close for a long time.
And so think about it, like these people are dismissed because there's no more funding for the federal government for say two weeks. It's an opportunity for the Trump administration to actually permanently take away that institution.
And this is part of we know that US President Donald Trump is wanting to cut spending from the budget, so he's kind of seeing this as a way to do that exactly.
And that's not a new idea. There was a similar threat to shut down the government back in March with the previous year's budget, and Chuck Schumer, who's one of the senior members of the Democrats, he actually decided to vote with the Republicans to avoid what he said would be a situation where Trump could permanently dismantle some of these agencies. Now six months on, Schumer has flipped his vote, and he's actually said, I know that I said that
back in March. Now that we're here in October, the threat to our democracy is too real. We need to take stronger action than a negotiated outcome.
It's such a complex situation.
But yeah, sorry, I thought that was a complex one of that definitely ask questions in the comments or DMUs as that's a take in.
I feel like every time I said this is my understanding, you're like, yeah, kind of, that's a lot more complex than that.
Well, people, you know, people have designed over two hundred and fifty years a US system that is really really complex. Whichever way you can.
Well, thank you so much for explaining it to us. Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily OS. We hope that you have a great October third. There is much to celebrate today. We'll be back this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkottin woman from
Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present,