Oh, hello everyone.

It is Monday, October 2nd, 2023.

And as of this moment, the government is not shut down.

But we came really close.

So before we launch into what government shutdowns are, why they happen, what happens when

they do happen, here is a super fast summary of what went down this weekend.

Just in case anybody out there missed it.

Now to start, government shutdowns usually happen when one party is pushing up against

another party in a different seat of power, and an agreement cannot be made in time to

decide how the government will fund itself.

Now what happened a few days ago was unique, because it was kind of one-sided.

The Republican Party in control of the House could not come up with a consensus among themselves.

Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, had worked with President Joe Biden months ago to

create a budget.

However, several hard-right members of the GOP opposed that budget.

Nobody was budging, no resolutions could pass, shutdown seemed imminent, and everyone

was having frantic meetings in back rooms.

So the Senate presented bipartisan legislation that would avoid a shutdown, a continuing

resolution, and House Speaker McCarthy refused to put it on the floor of his chamber for a vote.

Instead, McCarthy presented a different continuing resolution that catered to the hard-right

members of the House, thinking that would win since the Republicans do control the majority

there.

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