By Justin Somers

On October 1, the National Government’s new fiscal year began, which started the partial government shutdown.  As a result of the shutdown, certain portions of the government will cease working while other “essential” parts will continue working.  At first, the shutdown may appear to have little impact, but the longer it lasts, the larger the impacts will be according to economist Brian Kessler.

With 800,000 federal employees being sent home, parts of the government will be affected due to a lack of funding.

As a result of the shutdown, some Atlantic High School students were affected; (person with passport).  When asked how the shutdown affects businesses, AM Cohron Human Resource Manager, Kathy Somers said, “At my work we are required to ‘E-Verify’ new employees, but the E-Verify website has been shut down so we cannot follow Federal Regulations to  e-Verify new hires.”  E-Verify is a government program that is used to check the eligibility of workers in the United States.

When asked about how the government shutdown affected him, junior Mark Stinn said, “Yes, WIC recipients could not use their checks to purchase food, formula, fruit, and milk for their child.” Stinn has noticed this change because of his employment at Hy-Vee.

On October 16, Congress passed a new budget while also raising the debt ceiling, finally ending the government shut down after 16 days.  According to Standard and Poor’s, a potential 24 billion dollars was removed from the economy.  However, this is not the end, as the debt ceiling will have to be raised once again before February 7th.

This was not the longest government shutdown however; in 1995 the federal government shutdown for a total of 27 days.  Hopefully U.S. citizens won’t have to deal with another shutdown in another six months.