Letter to the editor: Entire Congress should not be blamed for government shutdown

In Kristen Taketa’s article, “Government shutdown’s impact on colleges currently minimal,” the Daily Bruin has done its readers a disservice by blaming “Congress” for shutting down the government. It’s the Republicans in the House that are responsible for this debacle, just as they were in 1995, and for the Bruin to ignore that fact is simply bad journalism. The Republican House and the Democratic Senate already agreed on spending levels, and the Senate had passed a spending bill with those agreed upon levels. If the House passed the Senate bill, the shutdown would be over. But House Republicans refuse to vote on the Senate bill because they say an unrelated law, the Affordable Care Act, is hurting the economy. Even the most cursory Google search fails to turn up any evidence that the Affordable Care Act is hurting the economy, which is understandable given that the law doesn’t take full effect until Jan. 1, 2014. And not just “some” Republicans were trying to strip funding, as stated in your article (“Members of Congress were especially divided on the Affordable Care Act, which some House Republicans are trying to strip of its funding.“). Nearly every Republican in the House and Senate voted no on both a clean continuing resolution that would keep the government open, and on the Affordable Care Act itself when it was enacted in 2010. Since Republicans are a part of Congress, you could say Congress voted to shut down the government, but that is a half-truth. Only Republicans voted to do so, and they were so proud of themselves, they even celebrated afterwards.

Rusty Austin
UCLA alumnus