In the early hours of Sunday morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would continue to fund the federal government.
Essentially this bill does three things: it temporarily keeps government operations funded through the middle of December, delays the affordable care act for a year and it repeals a tax on medical devices as part of the health care law.
As we await the response of the predominantly Democratic Senate, the nation remains on the brink of the first government shutdown in nearly two decades. Congress has until midnight Monday to avert this crisis. Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Bob Casey says passing the bill would have a negative impact on the progress of our nation’s economy.
“[A shutdown] will affect the growths we’ve made in job creation as well as small businesses who apply for help from the Small Business Administration and military pay for soldiers and their families,” says Casey.
Even if the government is only down for several days, over 70,000 federal employees in Pennsylvania alone will be unpaid and out of work.
“It has a job impact and an economic impact just at a time when we want the job numbers to be lifted, not degraded,” says Casey.
