On Tuesday, October 1, 2013, Google’s special banner displayed patches and badges from Yosemite National Park in celebration of its 123rd anniversary. Oh the irony. Yosemite gets to celebrate this anniversary by closing its doors, kicking everyone out, and sending its employees home without pay.

Nearly everyone at NASA gets to go home too, excluding the astronauts currently in space(mainly because they can’t come home) and the people needed to keep them alive. Many federal workers in various departments are being sent home, and it is not yet clear the complete list of who isn’t being paid. Many of those people were furloughed for six days in spring due to a similar failure.

In case you don’t know why, it’s because of the government’s failure to pass a budget for the 2014 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. Due to this absence of funding, much of the federal government(not Congress however, go figure) will be shutdown until this whole mess can be sorted out.

Why couldn’t they pass a budget? Because they are acting like children and refusing to cooperate.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known just as the Affordable Care Act(ACA), even better known as Obamacare, was the center of a huge(and ridiculous) argument across the House, Senate, and oval office. Republicans(who control the House) who didn’t want the act to be passed into law decided to not pass any budget that funded the law, and President Obama and the Democrats(who control the Senate) refused to pass any budget without funding for the ACA.

The law itself is a layered set of reforms to the healthcare system, including a mandate requiring citizens to be insured. Personally, I don’t think very highly of insurance companies. They charge outrageous rates only to drop you as soon as they can when you need that money back. The idea of insurance is a great theory, but the companies that are in charge of it are doing what I’ve come to expect from all major corporations: looking at people as numbers, trading integrity for greedy efficiency.

Naturally, I support the regulations that the ACA will be making, however, I don’t think it will be enough, so I don’t believe forcing people into these lopsided deals with these greedy and corrupt corporations is at all fair. Because of the fact that it mandates purchasing insurance, I don’t like this new law.

Despite that fact, my opinion(or anyone’s opinion) shouldn’t be more important than the income of an untold number of families across the nation. These immature people who we expect to run the country shouldn’t allow American families to be oppressed by the struggle of having no income. They argued and argued for weeks and reached no solution.

The last major shutdown in 1995-96 lasted 21 days, the longest one in our nation’s history. This time could be different because of the steadfastness of the childish politicians who caused this mess. Hopefully everything will be worked out as soon as possible and all the hardworking Americans can return to supporting their families.