What happens when a national government shutdown hits close to home? At Grand Ledge High School (GLHS), students and teachers are filled with frustrations, questions, and the uncertainty of this daily reality.
“There seems to be other priorities going on in our Congress [and] in our national government that seems to have kind of pushed this budget down the road to the point where we’re at now,” said Aaron Iturralde, an AP Government and Politics teacher at GLHS.
Student Perspective
Jocelyn Armstrong, a senior at GLHS, developed a new club at the start of this school year, called the Liberal Activist Club. She is involved with the ongoing news around the United States. She believes that voicing your concerns is important among issues like this,
“It’s very important to spread education about it because, in my opinion, when you learn about what is going on, you keep yourself educated,” Armstrong said.
This shutdown has affected millions of Americans, many of them being federal workers for major departments that have been laid off, as well as others who have been working with no pay like TSA agents or national park rangers.
“The sheer amount of jobs lost alone will impact the economy far more than any other shutdown that we’ve seen in the past,” Armstrong said.
Many believe that the shutdown was preventable based on the amount of time Congress was given to pass a budget, yet they pushed the bill down the road until the U.S. went into a government shutdown.
“I have heard that there has been numerous attempts by Democrats in office to make a budget to pass, and over and over again, the budget has been denied by the Republicans,” said Armstrong.
This is frustrating to many because of the amount of time that has been given to Congress, which costs the government billions during the shutdown period, and the impact that the shutdown is putting on people’s lives.
“There was a week-long recess that happened right after the shutdown where nobody in Congress even showed up to try to negotiate,” Armstrong said.
During this time of the shutdown many are frustrated with how the government is handling this shutdown. Armstrong is one of many at GLHS who share their opinions about how the government shutdown is affecting Americans daily.
“I think that this has caused a big divide between the people. Republicans and Democrats, especially in Congress, because they want to blame each other,” Armstrong said.
Teacher Perspective
Iturralde recently added a new class to GLHS, AP Government and Politics. He is involved in the government based on the class he teaches and also majored in political science at Michigan State University. He believes it is important for someone like him and others in our community to voice concerns that they may have about the government shutdown.
“We are the check for these representatives. We don’t like what they’re doing or we want them to be doing something else. During their term, we voice those concerns. And if they have not addressed those properly, when it comes to election day, you vote them out or you keep voting them in,” Iturralde said.
With the days continuing to go on with no budget passed, and an uncertainty of when a budget may be passed, create problems everyday without a budget.
“So people everyday, they may not feel it now, but later on, they’ll definitely feel the impacts of a government not operating,” Iturralde said.
Congress was given a date to get the budget passed, but it continued to be pushed back and delayed, leading the U.S. federal government into a shutdown.
“There is a specific date in which a budget should have been drafted and passed, that we kept passing what we call continuing resolutions, which is just temporary budgets for the government to kick it down later on the road,” Iturralde said.
Many in the House of Representatives struggle on how to settle with a budget, and cannot agree with others about the issues with the shutdown and how to resolve this shutdown.
“The people that we decided to elect to the House of Representatives in the Senate and the presidency, very much are divided on the issue of how to pass a federal budget, which is their main job,” Iturralde said.
Everyday that the government is shut down costs millions of dollars per day to the government. This money is being used towards workers who are working without a paycheck, workers that are laid off, and many other expenses.
“The last time we had a federal government shutdown that lasted 34 days, it cost our government $5 billion. So there’s even money that we’re going to be expending out to build back from a government shutdown,” Iturralde said.
These problems facing the U.S. have frustrated many Americans with how the government is dealing with the issues created by the shutdown. Iturralde is one of many within our Grand Ledge community to voice their concerns of how the government shutdown is affecting Americans daily.
“At the end of the day, teachers, most of us, we voted in the last election. Students, even though you can’t vote, you are still constituents of these congressional members. So this is concerning to you,” Iturralde said.
