Shutdown: Congress Passes Bill To Stop Default

With just hours to spare before the US Treasury lost its borrowing authority, financial disaster appears to have been averted.

新聞背景：

美國時間16日晚，美國參議院首先以81票支持、18票反對投票通過了里德·麥康奈爾議案。隨后該議案被送至眾議院，并以285票贊成、144票反對的表決結果得到通過。根據該議案，美國聯邦政府將重啟至明年1月15日，財政部發行國債的權限也被延長到明年2月7日。隨后奧巴馬也簽署了該議案，使之成為法律并開始生效。奧巴馬在稍早的全國講話中已經明確表示，“一旦法案放到我的桌上，我將立刻簽署，然后政府將馬上開門。”

受累于預算談判僵局，美國聯邦政府自10月1日起停擺。此后參眾兩院也先后提出數份旨在化解僵局的方案，但雙方遲遲未能就細節問題達成妥協。在政府關門兩周后，債務上限“大限日”的逼近又讓外界重燃對美國債務違約的擔憂，迫使兩黨重啟談判。

盡管如此，政府關門已經傷害美國經濟和消費者信心。國際評級機構標準普爾(Standard & Poor's)表示，到目前為止，聯邦政府的關門會使美國經濟損失240億美元。標普將美國2013年GDP年增長率由今年9月預計的3%下調至2%，將第四季度GDP增長率也下調了0.6%。另外標普也指出，目前美國政界的爭論預示任何臨時撥款議案都是權宜之計，2014年初兩黨料迎來下一輪博弈。

中國評級機構大公將美國評級從A下調至A-，并將美國信用評級展望維持在負面。

Finally the deal was sealed.

(…consider is laid upon the table.)

After frenzied weeks of political posturing and brinkmanship, America’s government can now reopen and crucially, it can keep paying its bills. The senate led deal will fund the government until mid-January and raised the debt ceiling until early February.

I wanna thank the leadership for coming here and getting this done, hopefully next time, it won’t be in the 11th hour, one of the things that I set throughout this process is we gotta get out of the habit of governing by crisis.

So federal workers can head back to their offices, tourists can go back to the museums, what remains is a scarred political system.

So things are moving again, at least for a while which is a huge relief for the American people who could only watch as the chaos played out on Capitol Hill, but it’s not impossible that in a couple of months’ time, America could once again find itself at a standstill.

I hope that we won’t be doing this again in January, but I wouldn’t be shocked.

I’m not happy because it’s gonna come up again. And I think this is no way to a country.

On the other side of that country the stain for politicians is similarly rife. In Barstow California there’s concern over what sort of message this sends to the world.

They’re kind of laughing at us, you know, look at us, we’re bar on money, go find another war.

It’s just runaway spending, and I think people are really getting tired of it. I do hope in the next election, they just put everybody out and start over.

Signs of relief that America won’t default on its debt were loudest on Wall Street in New York.

Oh, I think it’s fantastic, they struck a deal, I hadn’t heard about it, ok, so great, oh, what does the market do?

In the end, they all knew that it was gonna happen at some point, why the foot dragging is inexplicable to me.

Across Washington, the deal has been heralded as salvation from the brink of disaster. How it ever reached the point is perhaps the key concern.

Amada Walker, Sky News.