INTERVIEW: What does the US shutdown mean in practice?

The U.S. federal government has entered a shutdown, a few hours after the U.S. Senate failed to pass a short-term spending bill on Tuesday night US East Coast time. It's the first government shutdown in nearly seven years. The last and also the longest federal government shutdown occurred from late 2018 to early 2019 during President Trump's first term when Democrats opposed funding the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The result was a shutdown lasting over five weeks, during which some 800,000 federal employees were forced to work without pay or take unpaid leave. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be forced to take unpaid leave this time too, with some public services potentially suspended or delayed, and the release of economic data possibly impacted as well. Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre and has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress. He's been speaking to SBS's Virginia Langeberg about the impact of the shutdown.

Lights are on but nobody's home - US Government shutdown has begun Source: Getty / Prasit phot

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