Parts of the federal government have been closed since midnight on Dec. 22, making it the longest shutdown on record. It’s also the third since President Donald Trump took office.
The immediate and most visible impact of a shutdown is in the government’s day-to-day operations. Many national museums and parks are closed, immigration hearings are being postponed and the Food and Drug Administration isn’t doing routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities, to name a few examples. Of the 800,000 federal employees affected by the shutdown, 420,000 are working without pay while the rest have been furloughed.
But beyond the individual workers and families affected, could a short or lengthy shutdown affect the broader U.S. economy as well?
View the complete article by Scott R. Baker on the Conversation website here.