For the first time since 1995 and the 18^th time in the history of this nation, the federal government in the United States shut down.

The federal government officially shut down at midnight on October 1^st. A shutdown occurs when Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill to fund the government. What this means is that many government functions stopped working. Federal agencies closed their doors and sent their employees home. However, all parts of government did not shutdown. Many essential functions continued, including anything relating to national security, public safety, or legislated programs like Social Security which are still operational.

The primary issue that caused this shutdown is that the Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on whether to raise the debt ceiling. However, the shutdown wasn’t truly about the debt ceiling; it was about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Republicans’ pointless attempts to repeal it.

After over 40 attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, the Republicans took a different route to get rid of the legislation. Instead of repealing the act itself, the Republicans attempted to pass a spending bill that would defund and delay the Affordable Care Act for one year and repeal a tax on medical equipment. When Senate Democrats refused to pass the bill, Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio decided to shut down the government.

According to Brad Plumer of The Washington Post, about 800,000 federal workers were out of work until the government reopened. “That leaves about 1.3 million ‘essential’ federal workers, 1.4 million active-duty military members, 500,000 Postal Service workers, and other employees in independently funded agencies who will continue working,” writes Plumer. However, these essential workers will receive their pay only in delayed form if they get paid at all, excluding military personnel, of course. Government workers in these groups, including my mother and father, are working, essentially, for free, yet the men and women of Congress who caused this shutdown still get paid. This is extremely unfair to the people who not only need their paychecks, but who have important work to do.

Over the last few years, the Tea Party, an extremely far-right political arm of the Republican Party, has seized control of the Republican Party. There are only about 60 Tea Party members in the House but, for some unknown reason, House Republicans, including Speaker of the House Boehner, seem to get bullied into following the Tea Party’s agenda. This shutdown was actually headed by freshman Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who was endorsed by the Tea Party movement and elected in 2012. If anyone is to be blamed for this government shutdown, it’s the Tea Party and their Republican brethren who need to understand that they lost the fight on Obamacare.

Both the Democrats and Republicans claim that the other party refuses to negotiate. They’re like bickering little children. While they argued in Washington, hundreds of thousands of people were out of work. I understand the Republicans hate the idea of universal health care, but holding the government hostage over an ideology is unacceptable. What both parties needed to do was pass a spending bill that will fund and reopen the government.

Both chambers of Congress passed Obamacare and signed it into law in 2010. The Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional in 2012. Then, Mitt Romney, who ran on the promise to repeal the act, lost the 2012 presidential election. Obamacare is here to stay. The sooner the Right accepts that, the faster our country can progress.