Late Wednesday night, two hours before the United States could default on bill payments, the Senate and the House passed legislation to reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit. The House voted 285-144 to reopen the government while the Senate voted 81-18.
   After a bitter battle between Republicans and democrats, which ended in a 16-day government shutdown, life is finally back to normal in Washington, D.C. The Affordable Care Act that stirred up controversy remains a law passed by the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court of the U.S., signed by the president.
   Phil Griffin, former Mississippi State University College Republican chairman and president of Griffin Strategies, said he was pleased the leaders came together to end the government shutdown and bring an end to the negative effects it has had on many of our fellow Americans, however, he was extremely disappointed the debt ceiling was once again raised without any spending reductions.
   “It’s high time for both parties, in both chambers, to stop kicking the can down the road and exhibiting irresponsible leadership resulting in additional increases to a record debt that each of our children and grandchildren will be responsible for. Further, It’s imperative that the Senate join their colleagues in the House to provide the relief from Obamacare that many Americans have demanded,” Griffin said.
   Meghan Millea, economics professor at Mississippi State University, said when an economy does poorly policies are used to stimulate the economy. There are two different policies — fiscal policy and monetary policy. Fiscal policy involves government expenditure and tax revenues.
   “When they have an expansionary fiscal policy, that means to increase government spending or to decrease taxes. They increase expenditure while simultaneously decreasing their income, which causes budget deficits, just the same way it would happen to any individual if you spent more and you worked less or your income declined, then you would run a deficit on a monthly basis,” Millea said. “As an individual you will accumulate debt — be it student loan or credit card debt. That is exactly what is happening at the federal level that is an accumulation of debt, and that is where we get to the debt ceiling.”
   President Obama said in a statement delivered after the end of the government shutdown and the lifting of the federal debt limit on Thursday at the White House that the threat of default, of America not paying all the bills that we owe on time, increased our borrowing costs, which adds to our deficit.
    “There’s been a lot of discussion lately of the politics of this shutdown. But let’s be clear. There are no winners here. These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy. We don’t know yet the full scope of the damage, but every analyst out there believes it’s slowed our growth,” Obama said.
   Leslie Baker, political science professor at MSU, said certainly, Obama “won” as he was able to force the Republican party into a position where they had to give up on the shutdown, as the majority of Americans blame the Republican party for the shutdown and the financial crisis.
   “We came out of the 16-day shutdown with a major hit to the economy and tremendous loss in the public’s trust in government, so any win would need to be taken with a grain of salt,” Baker said.
   In the run up to the future elections, expect the ghost of the shutdown to haunt the GOP, but what will be politically interesting to see is how the Republican cadre responds to this criticism and tries to take hold of the Senate and win back the presidency.
   William Saletan, columnist for slate.com, said in his article titled, “You’ll Pay For This GOP,” If Republicans stage another big fight over the next debt ceiling then that would be three in a row. It might facilitate a significant political development — the transformation of debt payment into a national security issue.
  “Republicans could become the deadbeat party. Obama seems quite willing to attack them from this angle. And in framing economics as the key to American power, he has reality on his side,” Saletan said.
   Do not be surprised if President Obama uses this shutdown against the Republican party in the days to come. This shutdown will be used as political opportunism by the Democrats against the Republicans.
   The Affordable Care Act is famously known as Obamacare while this shutdown is known as the tea party shutdown. But as of today, for Americans it is a relief that the government is open for business and the 8 million federal workers that were furloughed are back to work.