US Government in part shutdown

I can't make head or tail off this.


How can some people shut down places and Obama just sit their and take it and not be able to do a thing about it.


Just who is running America again?

Home»News»World News»North America»USAUS government shutdown: President Obama labels Republican leaders 'reckless'
Barack Obama has called on Republicans to end the government shutdown, calling them "reckless".

Republican House Speaker John Boehner is for now holding firm on demands that the White House roll back its signature healthcare law in exchange for re-opening the government Photo: PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/AP
By Raf Sanchez, Washington
2:33PM BST 03 Oct 2013
4 Comments
In a fiery speech, Mr Obama called on his political rivals to end the impasse caused by their refusal to pass a budget that included provisions for his controversial new health insurance plan.

Speaking at a construction firm in Maryland, Mr Obama said that the longer the shutdown went on, "the worse it will be".

“Take a vote. Stop this farce. And end this shutdown right now,” he told an audience at a construction firm in Maryland.

His comments came as a growing number of rank-and-file members said they were prepared to cave and re-open the government without any concessions on Obamacare.

Around 18 Republicans, many of whom represent district with large numbers of federal employees, have said publicly they would vote for a "clean" funding bill that has no impact on the healthcare law.

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If Republican rebels were joined by all 200 Democrats, there would be enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass a bill which could be quickly accepted by the Senate and White House, ending the three-day shutdown crisis.

"Republicans fought the good fight," said Representative Scott Rigell, whose district is home to a large military population. "The time has come to pass a clean [bill] to reopen the government.”

Although the votes are there for a clean funding bill, John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, is for now holding firm on demands that the White House roll back its signature healthcare law in exchange for re-opening the government.

Mr Boehner controls what legislation is put to a vote and gave no indication that he would allow a vote on a clean bill as he emerged from a meeting with President Barack Obama last night.

"I would hope that the president and my Democrat colleagues in the Senate would listen to the American people and sit down and have a serious discussion about resolving these differences," he said.

Mr Obama has repeatedly said he would not enter any negotiations until the government is reopened and Congress votes to lift the debt ceiling, the legal amount of money the US government can borrow to service its debts.

On Thursday, he said that Mr Boehner could reopen the government and send hundreds of thousands of people back to work "in just five minutes" by passing a temporary operating budget with no partisan strings attached.

"Speaker John Boehner won't even let the bill get a yes or no vote, because he doesnt want to anger the extremists in his party," Mr Obama said.

"That is what his whole thing is about. There's a simple way to prove it. Send the bill to the floor, let everybody vote.

"It will pass. Send me the bill, I will sign it. The shutdown will be over and we can get back to the business of governing and helping the American people. It could happen in the next half hour."

If Congress does not vote before October 17, the US could begin to default on its debts for the first time in history, sending shockwaves through the global economy.

"Until we make sure that Congress allows treasury to pay for things that Congress itself already authorised we are not going to engage in a series of negotiations," Mr Obama told CNBC on Wednesday.

He will repeat that message on Thursday during a speech in Maryland, given at a small construction company that has benefitted from government loans granted by an agency that has been partially shut down.

The Americans are blaming the Politicians suggesting they are behaving like spoilt brats and must sort this out. Obama has made a speech to the public saying his aim is to see healthcare for everyone. The leader of the Republicans is holding firm and wants a dialogue with Obama but behind the scenes
there is infighting among Republicans with some ready to accept the Healthcare Bill because of the anger of those unemployed and their supporters.

Leukemia Patient To Lose Insurance...

FOUNTAIN HILLS, AZ -
A Fountain Hills man says he may soon have to get another job just to pay for healthcare insurance under the new Affordable Care Act.

Michael Cerpok, is a high school drop-out, one of six kids born to a school teacher, and doesn’t come from a wealthy family. He has run two businesses for more than 25 years and says he may have to do more to literally stay alive.

“I've worked hard because I've had to, and I’ve had to, because cancer runs in my family," says Cerpok, who picked his current health insurance based on that family history. His monthly premium is just about half of his monthly take-home pay.

Back in 2006, he found out he had an incurable form of leukemia that requires ongoing treatment until he dies.

In 2012, his treatment bill was more than $350,000. But because of his insurance, his out-of-pocket was only $4,500.

That’s about to change because Michael just got a letter from his insurance carrier saying as of January 1, he would be dropped from coverage because of new regulations under Obamacare. His doctor at the Mayo Clinic may be gone as well.

"Now it doesn't mean I can't go see my current doctor, but my $4,500 out-of-pocket, is going to turn into a minimum of $26,000 out-of-pocket to see the doctor that I’ve been seeing the last seven years," he said.

Michael realizes millions of people will benefit from the coverage, but he wants them to realize that others are making sacrifices to make that happen.

He says that he and his wife will continue to look at their options, try and find a similar plan, and if they need to, they’ll pick up second jobs.


http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_northeast_valley/fountain_hills/fountain-hills-man-dropped-from-health-insurance-because-of-new-regulations

My American Friend is a retired Mayor , very Political and I asked her to explain ObamaCare because healthcare as you know is deducted at source and even if you are unemployed you can still get free Healthcare. This is her explanation, not in any particular order:grin: 


And 6th - there is no way he should negotiate any change in health care for a continuing budget resolution or a debt ceiling increase. They passed the bills spending the money, now they have to pay for them. Stop passing the bills that are pork filled and unnecessary and are only done for votes or to please a contributor. Budget discussions are absolutely necessary to reduce spending.






d to put all my political stuff that I have been meaning to catalog from when I served in the legislature into some reasonable format for my kids and whatever legacy they contain and it is a daunting task.

Second, I do miss the occasional words of wisdom but I do read most of the posts, just don't respond.

Third, the most important thing wrong with Obamacare is that Obama is black and how could he possibly have accomplished what 12 white Presidents couldn't. I am in disbelief that the people of this country do not think that 20-40 million people without insurance is a good thing. This is not a government paid program although much of it will be subsidized by the government???? Duh!
It is mandatory, which really riles the conservatives, but the only way the program could work, with both sick and well people buying the insurance. It offers four different levels of coverage and costs are based on level of coverage with certain minimum coverage requirements like mammos, contraception, basic physical, certain shots, certain tests, etc. Any health insurance company could have participated and some opted in and some opted out.

Fourth, it is essential particularly now when our corporations have decided not to include health care in their benefit packages and more and more people were without coverage using emergency rooms as doctor treatment centers for which they did not have to pay if they could not pay.

Fifth, it needs tooling and that will be an ongoing project.

love

Reid Urges Boehner to Act While Speaker Calls for Talks

By Richard Rubin, Kathleen Hunter & Roxana Tiron - Oct 8, 2013 4:46 PM GMT+0100.




..



In simultaneous challenges to one another, U.S. congressional leaders said the other party must move first to resolve the partial government shutdown and raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Republican-controlled House should vote to end the shutdown and drop demands to change the 2010 Affordable Care Act. House Speaker John Boehner, also speaking in the Capitol this morning, said Reid and President Barack Obama should negotiate.





Enlarge image









U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, from left, Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, listen during a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2013. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg




14:23

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks on the Senate floor about the partial government shutdown, the Affordable Care Act and the prospects for budget negotiations. (Source: Bloomberg)
.
“The way to resolve this is to sit down and have a conversation to resolve our differences,” Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said after meeting with his party’s caucus.

Obama called the speaker less than an hour later to “reiterate that he won’t negotiate on a government-funding bill or debt-limit increase,” said Brendan Buck, a Boehner spokesman.

The White House, in a statement, urged Boehner to allow a vote on raising the debt limit and repeated that only Congress can authorize more borrowing. Obama is willing to negotiate after Republicans end the shutdown and remove the risk of default, the statement said.

The split-screen sniping -- with Boehner speaking to reporters and Reid speaking on the Senate floor -- came as lawmakers are taking the first tentative steps toward resolving the standoff. Both sides are exploring actions that will be needed to end the week-old shutdown and raise the debt limit before U.S. borrowing authority lapses Oct. 17.

Avoiding Default

The start of legislative movement is a sign that some members of both parties see concerns about the effects of a prolonged government shutdown and want to avoid default on interest or other government payments.

Investor concern that U.S. lawmakers won’t avert a default has roiled markets. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) fell 0.6 percent at 11:05 a.m. in New York. The yield on 10-year Treasuries increased one basis point to 2.64 percent.

The difference in rates between one- and three-month bills reached 18.2 basis points, the biggest since March 2008, according to closing-market data.

Senate Democrats are planning a test vote before the end of this week on a measure that would grant Obama authority to raise the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling, probably for a year unless two-thirds of both chambers of Congress disapprove.

That plan emerged as Gene Sperling, the director of Obama’s National Economic Council, opened another route toward at least a temporary resolution. He declined to rule out a short debt-limit extension while reiterating the administration’s preference for a longer-term resolution.

Republican Priorities

House Republicans, who had previously discussed pairing a debt-limit increase with a list of party priorities, haven’t released legislation or set a time line for action. Instead, they’re planning to vote to appoint a working group of House members and senators to resolve the multiple impasses, said Representative Matt Salmon, an Arizona Republican.

What Is This Ceiling They're Trying to Raise? »

“What we are going to do is focus all of our attention on wrapping everything into a negotiation, everything,” Salmon said in an interview. “Put everything on the table.”

House Democrats rejected the idea, saying it would recreate the 2011 bipartisan supercommittee that deadlocked.

“We don’t need a supercommittee,” said Representative Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat. “The votes exist right now” to reopen the government.

Yet to be determined is whether House Republicans will consider a vote to raise the debt-ceiling this week or wait for the Senate to act, said two Republican congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss party strategy.

Pressing Boehner

If all Senate Democrats along with six Republicans vote for giving Obama authority, they could send a debt-limit increase without policy conditions to the Republican-controlled House early next week. That would put pressure on Boehner, who opposes a clean debt-limit bill.

“If we can get a bipartisan debt ceiling bill in the Senate, that’s one more -- what’s the word -- beacon of sanity that the House at some point would have to pay attention to,” Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, said today.

At least four Republican senators wouldn’t rule out that option yesterday while a spokesman for Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, said in an e-mail that Kirk would vote for raising the debt ceiling without conditions.

Calendar Running

“We’ve got a situation where you have a calendar running, you have people who are frustrated and upset, and so let’s figure it out,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said in an interview at the Capitol yesterday. “We shouldn’t be dismissing anything.”

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, wouldn’t take a position on a clean debt-ceiling increase when asked by reporters yesterday. At least four Senate Republicans -- Murkowski, John McCain of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine -- kept open the option of voting for a debt-limit increase without conditions or helping one pass.

None of the proposals being floated has been embraced by both parties and all face long odds.

The chance of a U.S. government default is “reasonably high,” Bruce Ratner, chairman of developer Forest City Ratner Cos., said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. There’s a “small group of people who don’t have an understanding of how serious it is,” he said, adding that “the ramifications are huge.”

In a report today, the International Monetary Fund cut its global economic outlook for this year and next and warned that a U.S. default could “seriously damage” the world economy.

Losing Ground

The partial shutdown, which began Oct. 1, has shuttered government services such as Head Start preschool programs and national parks and furloughed federal employees. Other functions, such as mail delivery and Social Security benefits, are continuing.

Obama reiterated yesterday that he won’t negotiate with Republicans over the shutdown and the debt-limit increase, which have merged into a single fight that has proven intractable so far. Republicans are insisting on changing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, while Obama refuses to engage in discussions about tying policy conditions to opening the government or raising the debt limit.

Path Out

If it succeeds, the Senate Democrats’ proposal could provide a path out of the debt-ceiling deadlock by giving both parties what they want. Obama would get an increase in the debt ceiling without negotiating policy conditions with Republicans, and Republicans could say they objected to Obama’s attempts to raise the borrowing limit.

For the Senate Democrats’ plan to work, at least some Republicans would have to allow it to happen. Giving Obama the authority would require the support of at least six Republicans on procedural votes.

In the House, Boehner would have to allow a vote on the plan and at least 16 Republicans would have to support it for it to succeed. He has said the House won’t pass a clean debt-limit bill.

The U.S. will run out of borrowing authority on Oct. 17 and will have about $30 billion in cash after that. The country would be unable to pay all of its bills, including benefits, salaries and interest, some time between Oct. 22 and Oct. 31, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The House has been passing separate funding bills for parts of the government, including the National Institutes of Health and national parks. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have rejected those measures.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-09/recession-looms-if-treasury-uses-tools-to-prevent-a-debt-default.html?cmpid=

This is very interesting .

House Republicans will propose a temporary extension of the US debt ceiling if President Obama agrees to negotiations over budget issues including "Obamacare".

House of Representatives leader John Boehner will offer a six-week extension to the debt ceiling to Mr Obama during a meeting at the White House later on Thursday.

Mr Obama has previously refused to negotiate over budget issues until Congress ended the now 10-day government shutdown and prevented the threat of a first-ever government default.

During a news conference, Mr Boehner said the proposed extension to the debt ceiling was conditional on budget discussions.


National parks and monuments have been closed during the 10-day shutdown
He said: "It's time for leadership. It's time for these negotiations and this conversation to begin.

"What we want to do is to offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling in agreement to go to conference on the budget."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr Obama is willing to sign a "clean" bill - one that does not include policy demands.

He added: "The president is happy that cooler heads at least seem to be prevailing in the house. We haven't seen a bill yet."

The proposal would allow the US government to borrow money until November 22 - potentially averting an unprecedented federal default that could occur as early as October 17.

The Treasury Department has said it would be unable to pay all of its bills if the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling is not raised before next Thursday.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde warned on Thursday that US failure to raise its debt ceiling would do serious damage to the global economy.

The shutdown began after Congress failed to pass a bill to temporarily fund the federal government, resulting in hundreds of thousands of federal employees stopping work.

The measure is normally routine, but has become entangled in Republican demands for delays or amendments to President Obama's health care overhaul and reduced government spending.

SOME TEA PARTY SUPPORTERS HAVE CALLED FOR THE ASSISINATION OF PRESIDENT OBAMA.

World Economic and Financial Surveys

Fiscal Monitor

Taxing Times

October 2013

Persistently high debt ratios in advanced economies and emerging fragilities in the developing world cast clouds on the global fiscal landscape. In advanced economies, with narrowing budget deficits, the average public debt ratio is expected to stabilize in 2013–14—but it will be at a historic peak. At the same time, fiscal vulnerabilities are on the rise in emerging market economies and low-income countries—on the back, in emerging market economies, of heightened financial volatility and downward revisions to potential growth, and in low-income countries, of possible shortfalls in commodity prices and aid. Strengthening fiscal balances and buttressing confidence thus remain at the top of the policy agenda. Against that backdrop, this issue explores whether and how tax reform can help strengthen public finances. Taxation is always a sensitive topic and is now more than ever at the center of policy debates around the world. Can countries tax more, better, more fairly? Results reported in this issue show that the scope to raise more revenue is limited in many advanced economies and, where tax ratios are already high, the bulk of the necessary adjustment will have to fall on spending. In emerging market economies and low-income countries, where the potential for raising revenue is often substantial, improving compliance remains a central challenge.

Business news and market: live

Nervousness over US default dominates markets on Columbus Day as Senate tries to pick up the pieces after failed talks






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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid leaves the Capitol building after Republicans and Democrats fail to find a compromise in a rare Sunday session to hammer out a budget deal to reopen the government, which has been partially shut down for two weeks. Photo: Getty







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• Osborne launches 'priority' visas for Chinese firms
• World should 'de-Americanise', says China
• US debt ceiling: Markets on edge as talks drag on
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15.31 US stocks are not the only ones affected by the US impasse, but the approaching US debt deadline has until now failed to overly alarm markets.


In London, the benchmark FTSE 100 stayed just in the green with shares up 0.05pc to stand at 6,467.37 points in afternoon trading.


Frankfurt's DAX 30 fell 0.21pc to 8,706.47 points and the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.27pc to 4,208.37.


Adding to selling pressure was a disappointing batch of Chinese economic data, while on the corporate front shares in French car giant Peugeot dived.



15.04 Aside from the US, a report out by Paris-based OECD has said that inflation in the G20 countries fell to 3pc in the 12 months to August, down from 3.2pc.

India and Argentina had the highest annual inflation rates (equal to or above 8pc) in August 2013, while Japan, France, Canada and Italy had the lowest annual inflation rate (between 0.9pc and 1.2pc).

Annual inflation slowed in Turkey (to 1.5pc, down from 2.0pc), the United States (to 1.6pc, down from 1.9pc), Germany (to 1.5pc, down from 1.7pc), and more moderately in the European Union (to 1.5pc, down from 1.7pc), Brazil (to 6.1pc, downfrom 6.3pc), India (to 10.7pc, down from 10.8pc) and China (to 2.6pc, down from 2.7pc).

In contrast, annual inflation picked up in Indonesia (to 8.8pc, up from 8.6pc) and Japan (to 0.9pc, up from 0.7pc).

It remained stable in the Russian Federation (at 6.5pc), South Africa (at 6.4pc), Mexico (at 3.5pc), and Italy (at 1.2pc).



Source: OECD


14.45 Congress won't be too phased by the fall in markets according to this strategist.

Twitter: Tony Fratto - 100pt drop in the Dow won't frighten Congress. They won't be frightened until we're bartering with rocks & marbles.



14.31 US markets are open and as expected they have nudged lower.

The Dow Jones is down 0.29pc, the S&P 500 is down 0.38pc and the Nasdaq is down 0.66pc.


14.25 Goldman Sachs thinks the shutdown will have shaved 0.5pc off GDP, which would knock the US's Q4 growth estimate down to 2pc.

In the note Goldman says:

From October 1-4, we believe the shutdown probably reduced federal compensation by roughly $400mn per day. We would expect the non-compensation aspects of the initial stage of the shutdown to have been very modest. Overall, the first four business days of the shutdown probably reduced growth by 0.16pp.

The shutdown has now lasted a second week, but the incremental effect should be smaller. The Department of Defense has brought most of its employees back to work, leaving 450k federal employees still out of work, and thus reducing the effect on federal compensation to $225mn per day. We would expect a small reduction in services-related consumption as well. After the second week of shutdown, we believe the cumulative reduction in Q4 real GDP growth amounts to 0.28pp (Exhibit 2).

…

If a longer-term resolution can be reached over the coming days, we would expect the downside risk from the fiscal debate to be limited to about 0.5pp in Q4, compared to our current growth forecast of 2.5pc.




14.12 The dollar, as it has done throughout the crisis, bore the brunt of the nervousness, shedding 0.3pc against the safer option of the yen to trade at around 98.25 yen.

Lee Hardman, currency economist at BTMU, told Reuters

We think the closer we get to the debt ceiling deadline without an agreement, (the more) dollar/yen will come under intensive selling pressure.

The greenback also slipped 0.3pc against the Swiss franc at 0.9098 francs while the euro rose 0.1pc to $1.3558.




13.57 Gold having a tough day. The precious metal has seen its price slide as the debt ceiling stalemate continues.

By Sky News US Team

The White House has rejected a new proposal from House Republicans for reopening the government and extending the debt ceiling.

House GOP leaders on Tuesday pitched the plan to fellow Republicans to counter an emerging Senate deal to reopen the government and forestall a looming default on US obligations.

The proposal, which includes a two-year suspension of a new tax on medical devices aimed at funding President Obama's signature health care law, was immediately rejected by the White House.

White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said the plan is a "partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans who forced the government shut down in the first place".

Watch what China does with US debt, not what it says
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: October 15th, 2013

188 Comments Comment on this article



So much for the hot rhetoric from Beijing questioning the creditworthiness of US debt and consigning the US dollar to the dustbin of history.

The latest data shows that China's foreign reserves soared by $163bn in the third quarter to $3.66 trillion, one of the biggest jumps ever.

Mark Williams and Qinwei Wang from Capital Economic called the rise "astonishing". They estimate that China's central bank must have bought $70bn of foreign bonds last month in a frantic bid to hold down the currency.

We won't know for a while where the money went, but a big chunk must have gone into US Treasuries. So bear that in mind when you read the Xinhua claims that the US debt ceiling fight "has again left many nations' tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonised."

Or when it says:

A new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing. To that end, several corner stones should be laid to underpin a de-Americanised world.

Talk, talk, talk.

China's soaring reserves expose the truth. (And no, excess reserves are not a sign of strength, they are a sign of a deformed economy). Beijing is not in fact opening up its capital accounts and preparing to let the market decide the exchange rate.

The good news for China is that is no longer an emerging market in any meaningful sense. It was a safe haven during the great summer squall that hit India, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine, Serbia, et al. China did not suffer capital flight. It suffered a surge of very unwelcome capital inflows.

But there is a darker side to this. For all the talk of reform, China still refuses to give up its mercantilist trade policy. It is holding down the yuan to cling onto global market share and protect the wafer-thin margin of its exporters, not always successfully.

I have grave doubts about the new consensus view that China is roaring back. There is a high chance that this will fizzle out. You can see from Simon Ward's money data at Henderson Global Investors that China's money supply has rolled over:


Click to enlarge

Mr Ward's measure of six-month real M1 growth is an early warning for the economy, roughly six months ahead. So it points to a fresh slowdown over the late winter/early spring. Be prepared.

In any case, the recent burst of growth has been driven almost entirely by reverting to the bad old ways of top-down investment in heavy industry, and excess credit (yet again), as both the IMF and World Bank hinted in their latest reports.

The economic "efficiency" of debt has collapsed. Each extra yuan of loans now yields just 0.18 yuan of GDP growth. The credit cycle is played out. Debt has jumped from $9 trillion to $23 trillion in five years, reaching 200pc of GDP. Keeping it going is playing with fire. The experts in Beijing know exactly what this implies, but they can't easily stop it. Political vested interests are at play.

Zhiwei Zhang from Nomura has published a note, "China: Why the Economic Recovery is Unsustainable", citing seven reasons why the latest expansion is unhealthy and doomed to wilt like a failed souffle.

The one that struck me most was the finding in the IMF's Article IV report that China's full fiscal deficit (including local government) was 7.4pc of GDP last year. It was 9.7pc excluding land sales, which should be exclude because that sort of funding is a Ponzi scheme.

This is actually worse than the US, as you can see from the chart below:



This does not mean that the wheels will fall off the Chinese economy. What it does show is how far the Chinese growth model is living on borrowed time. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

It will be a much harder slog from now on.

Read more by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Telegraph Blogs
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By Katherine Rushton, US Business Editor

10:20PM BST 15 Oct 2013



Comments87 Comments





Fitch could strip America of its prized "AAA" credit rating within weeks, the rating agency has warned, amid heightening fears that the world’s largest economy is headed for a default.


The ratings agency believes the country will raise its $16.7trn debt ceiling in time to ensure it can keep up with interest payments on its soveriegn debt, but said the ongoing political stand-off in Washington was “casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the US” regardless.


If the US does default, Fitch warned it would downgrade American bonds from AAA to B+, the highest rating it will award any security that defaults but is expected to make a “swift full or near recovery”.


American bonds are regarded as the safest government debt in the world, and are often used as an laternative to cash, so any downgrade of this kind would send shockwaves throughout the global system.


On Tuesday morning, politicians in Washington were hopeful of reaching a deal to temporarily raise the debt ceiling and reopen the US government. However, talks quickly fell apart with just one day to go before America is due to breach its borrowing threshold.