Government Shutdown? What about the children?

My 11-year-old niece...just because.

A government shutdown is no joke. Some poor family (that doesn't follow the news for some reason) expecting to cap off a road trip with a visit to a national park is going to be turned away because the place is shut down due to the budgetary stalemate between Republicans and Democrats.

What a downer.That family will probably eat a mediocre meal at a nearby Denny's before a long drive back home. The children will ask why. Mom and dad won't be able to offer a simple enough explanation that makes sense. There will be tears. 

Especially because, as CBS News reports, "Shutting down the National Park Service - which draws approximately 800,000 visitors a day at 393 National Parks, monuments and historic sites - would represent a loss of $32 million a day in revenue from admissions/fees."

Isn't that just ironic as hell. Our legislators, our chosen representatives, can't come to agreement on a budget, let alone a temporary bill that would avoid a shutdown -- and the decision will hurt local economies that benefit from the tourism national parks bring them.

But of course, the impact the shutdown can have on people goes far beyond national parks. This article from MSN Money details other ways that citizens might be hurt.

"There's no question it would inconvenience the public in ways large and small. Consider some of the impacts of the three-week shutdown in 1995-1996 -- all of which could be repeated this time around:

1. New patients were no longer accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health. In addition, NIH disease hot lines and CDC disease surveillance were stopped.
2. Work on more than 3,500 bankruptcy cases in the federal court system was suspended.
3. Hundreds of thousands of "nonessential" federal workers were furloughed for three weeks, from mid-December 1995 to early January of 1996. (Some of those workers eventually received back pay for their missed days.)
4. Of $18 billion in Washington, D.C.-area federal contracts, $3.7 billion (more than 20%) were affected adversely by the funding lapse.
5. The National Park Service closed 368 sites, for a loss of 7 million visitors. The National Park Service administers 84.4 million acres of federal land in 49 states and other federal territories. Since 2008, park visits have totaled 285 million annually.
6. National museums and monuments closed, including the Smithsonian and other government buildings, with an estimated loss of about 2 million visitors.
7. More than 600 toxic waste dump sites went untended and uncleaned during the last shutdown. About 2,400 Superfund employees did not work.
8. The recruiting and testing of new law enforcement officials -- including 400 Border Patrol agents -- were suspended.
9. During the last shutdown, 20,000 to 30,000 applications for visas by foreigners went unprocessed each day, along with 200,000 applications for U.S. passports. Airlines also suffered, as many prospective travelers were unable to fly.
10. The Department of Veterans Affairs had to cut many of its services -- including health care, welfare, travel and finance -- as the department could not process compensation claims.
11. The shutdown meant a delay in processing alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives applications by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
12. The National Weather Service did not produce its regular reports.
13. New Social Security claims were not processed, because the agency furloughed more than 61,000 employees. As the shutdown continued, the agency regrouped, recalling workers to start processing new claims again. "

If we are lucky, our elected officials can reach some sort of solution by midnight, when a shutdown would go into effect. To be honest, I don’t have much hope that a shutdown can be averted. But hopefully it doesn’t drag on too long. That would be an even worse joke on the American public than the one attempted at the top of this blog post.

UPDATE: a short term deal was reached and a shutdown was avoided, but things are far from over.