Roundup: Shutdown's impact ripples through the states

Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - 01:39 Staff Reports

President Obama today called for meetings on the shutdown.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— At first, it was a vibration, the tinny rattle of a kitchen window as a truck rumbles down the road.

But a week into the federal government shutdown, the impact is building the volume of a sonic boom:

Bloomberg reports that states will furlough workers and eliminate services to the poor because federal funding has stopped.
The shutdown is hurting small businesses. A story in The New York Times told of an entrepreneur whose loan will not come through until the Small Business Administration reopens.

Death benefits for military families have stopped. President Obama is taking emergency steps to restore the benefits, according to USA Today.
The shutdown has stopped the important work of an obscure agency that approves breweries, according to the Associated Press. This could create delays throughout the rapidly growing industry, whose customers expect inventive and seasonal beer.

With the crisis deepening, the White House on Wednesday announced meetings with lawmakers of both parties to focus on the shutdown, the debt crisis and the fiscal stalemate, The Washington Post reports. After those meetings were announced, stock prices advanced.

Members of both parties spoke of a short-term increase in the debt limit to allow time for more substantive negotiations, according to the Chicago Tribune.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial, Rep. Paul Ryan suggested a compromise that wouldn't touch Obamacare. And Koch Industries, owed by conservative business leaders Charles and David Koch, distanced itself from the effort to keep the government shut down unless Obamacare is defended, according to an NBC News report.

While leaders struggle for a solution to the shutdown, a survey shows that most Americans hold Republicans responsible. But public reverence has taken a downward turn for all players, including President Obama.

An Associated Press-GfK survey released Wednesday shows 62 percent primarily blamed Republicans for the shutdown. Half said Obama or Democrats bear much of the responsibility. And a Gallup Poll Wednesday showed that the Republican Party is now viewed favorably by 28 percent of Americans, down from 38 percent in September. This is the lowest rating for either party since Gallup first asked the question in 1992.