Both sides are NOT to blame for the current budget mess

Late in the evening of September 30, 2013, the House Rules Committee Republicans secretly changed the rules of the House so that the ONLY Member allowed to call up the Senate's clean CR for a vote was Majority Leader Eric Cantor or his designee -- all but guaranteeing the government would shut down and stay shut down. Previously, all Members had the right to bring such bills up for a vote. Democracy has been suspended in the House of Representatives.



Of course, the US needs a real parliament where failing to pass a budget bill would result in a dissolution of parliament and new elections.

On the other hand, given how fractious US politics are, the US would go through more governments than Italy.

No other country shuts down its government in the same way the U.S. does.

That's not to say that other nations don't have budgetary disagreements and worse. They do. But "for most of the world, a government shutdown is very bad news — the result of revolution, invasion, or disaster," says Anthony Zurcher at BBC News. Seriously, "even in the middle of its ongoing civil war, the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers' wages."

Syria's not alone. "Countries like Pakistan and Colombia have had civil wars, coups, financial crises, even defaults but never a government shutdown," says Erik Voeten at The Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog.