Good morning, John, and welcome to a special edition of "Let's Understand the News" 'cause this morning my government shut down.

Okay, so yesterday in America, we had a government. Today... a little less so. But what does it mean? Is the military still protecting us? Who's going to search my bags at the airport? Why did it happen? How is it even possible? Who is responsible? What is in my mouth?

It was a hair. There was a hair in my mouth.

Let's go through it.

Here in America, there are two different rooms full of people who make the rules. In order for something to become a law, they have to agree on it. Also, somewhat importantly, they approve the budget, which is basically the law that makes it legal for the government to spend money. The budget is given to Congress by the President, and then it is treated like any other bill, which is to say, very poorly.

Often, that abuse of the budget will take so long that Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution because they won't be ready to put the new budget into effect when the old budget comes out of effect. The continuing resolution basically just said, "Let's just do what the old budget did for a few more weeks while we get our act together." These are generally very easy to pass, because they're one very small step away from doing absolutely nothing. 

The problem is that Obamacare, which was passed into law in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court, today went into full swing, and the Republicans are not done fighting it. The Republican-led House of Representatives voted on the continuing resolution with a little thing added that said, "Obamacare: Not gonna happen for another year."

The Democrat-controlled Senate is then like, "No. That's not what the continuing resolution is for. It's to keep the government from shutting down, not making sweeping changes to the most significant piece of domestic policy in 50 years."

Then the House was like, "Come on! At least come over and talk to us. We've got root beer!"

Then the Senate is like, "No, man. Holding the government hostage- way not cool. And I don't even like root beer." 

And then the House was like, "See, everybody? The Senate won't even talk to us. They're just too cool for school. They WANT the government to shut down. Who doesn't like root beer?"

Interestingly, the healthcare system is funded separately from all this stuff. So indeed, Obamacare went into effect despite the government shutdown today. Ughhhh!

You want to learn what Obamacare is about? We just launched a channel called Healthcare Triage and uploaded a video about that very topic. Go watch it now, go watch it later, whatever. 

Now, the Republicans don't actually think that they're gonna stop Obamacare, which is weird, right? The bigger problem here is that politicians have, over the years, redrawn their district lines so that they are more and more Republican or more and more Democrat. This way, it's easier to win any given election. However, it's radicalized the districts so that if you wanna, like, represent your ultra-Republican or ultra-Democrat district, you have to be really uncooperative and terrible at being in Congress. That's sort of the root of the problem here. Not an easy problem to fix. 

Now, as far as what the government shutdown needs, things like museums and national parks, the EPA, NASA: those things just close down, basically. But things like defense, transportation security, border patrol, food inspectors, emergency readiness: Those people are excepted, and they get to go to work today. Postal service is self funded, so that's fine. Social Security and medicare and medicaid are all separate from this, so they continue operating. Starting today, about 800,000 people are out of a job, including a very good friend of mine, so I'm kind of mad about that, until Congress gets its act together.

No one knows how quickly this will be resolved. It could be 3 days, it could be 3 weeks. But it will be resolved, because I have confidence that Congress wants the country to exist. People will lose pay, we probably will lose some great employees to the private sector, and the whole world will laugh at our inability to complete even the most mundane tasks. It's embarrassing and stupid, and to be frank, it's a dangerous game we're playing, but we will get through it. 

John, I'll see you on Friday.