Beginning 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the United States government shut down after Congress failed to pass the spending bill. The oldest democracy and the wealthiest nation on the planet self-inflicted a shutdown after over a week of heated debate on Capitol Hill.
  This abrupt shutdown, which came after 17 years, will cost the U.S. economy $300 million a day in lost economic output, according to the IHS Inc.
     A report in Bloomberg Business Week said Bank of America Merrill Corp. projects that a two-week closing would curb fourth-quarter growth by 0.5 percent, while closing for all of October would shave two percent from GDP, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research for Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research, wrote in a note to clients.
     Sulagna Saha, graduate research assistant at the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at Mississippi State University said she did not look forward to the shutdown because it directly affected her. Saha’s father, who is a federal government employee at the United States Department of Agriculture, will remain unpaid.
   “I think it’s pretty ridiculous. It’s not like it’s going to bring any drastic change or improvement for our economy since the House of Republicans is planning to postpone Obama’s health care policy regardless of the circumstances,” Saha said. ”It is not fair to resolve one feud in this manner and make millions of people suffer like this. It’s not a smart move at all. It’s going to result in a lot of upset people who once followed him (Obama).”
    In a statement on Monday before the government shut down, President Obama said he would work with anyone of either party to make sure the Affordable Care Act works better and to make sure the government works better, but he will not repel or gut the act completely.
    “One faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election,” Obama said.
    Glenn Mitchell, marine surveyor in Mobile, Ala., said the Republicans hold the American public hostage until they get their demands.
  “If foreign terrorists did this we would not tolerate it for 30 seconds, and legislation by extortion is no way to run a government,” Mitchell said.
   The official order to close the government came a few minutes before midnight on Monday, after the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo directing agencies to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations.”
  More than 800,000 federal workers will now be furloughed, and millions will continue to work without pay.
   James Surowiecki, New Yorker columnist, said in an article after the shutdown the U.S. has no trouble getting people to lend money at eminently reasonable interest rates, so the only way to default was if the U.S. chooses not to pay the bills. He also added that Republicans do not have the numbers to repeal Obamacare.
    “Republicans would like to repeal Obamacare. But they don’t have the votes. That’s the simple reality that all the talk about the unpopularity of Obamacare is meant to occlude: Republicans control only one house of Congress. In the past, that would have been enough to end the story,” Surowiecki said.
    The world leader of space studies and outer space missions, NASA, completely shutdown Tuesday. The personnel serving  on the on-going missions will continue to work without pay. All 401 national parks in the U.S. will remain closed, including the Statue of Liberty. Businesses depending on these will have no customers.
     The federal government is the largest employer in the U.S., so expect a large number of Americans to be at home.
    In a time when the fragile U.S. economy looks to gain strength, a self-inflicted crisis by the Congressmen will hurt millions across America.
   It doesn’t matter whether you are a republican or a democrat, this shutdown will affect you either directly or indirectly.
   At the end of the day, it is not your party affiliation that plays a significant role in your lives. It is the fundamental rights you enjoy as Americans that do. After all, the worst nightmare an American could have is an axe on his personal liberty.