27 September 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. (KSNW) – As talk of a government shutdown began looking like a real possibility this week, some lawmakers from Kansas say Republicans have drawn a hard line on money and spending.
“We’re going to spend $700 billion this year on interest,” said U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). “So certainly, there’s a large number of us up here that think we need to address the long-term financial situation of our country.”
Democrat leaders hailed a bi-partisan compromise late Tuesday coming out of the U.S. Senate to extend government spending past the end of the month to Nov. 17. That’s something Senator Marshall expected.
“It is very possible that they will figure out a way to keep the government open with some type of a short-term ongoing resolution,” Senator Marshall told KSN on Tuesday. “There’s plenty of blame to go on both sides of the aisle for this.”
One business analyst says the impact of any shutdown will be felt across the country and in Kansas.
“When you look at the previous one, a possible scenario when there’s this much gridlock between parties is that it could go a month, right? And the odds of it going much longer than that is unlikely,” said analyst Jeremy Hill with the Wichita State University Center for Economic Development and Business Research. “So overall economy, as other economists have predicted, if it goes a month, it could slow the economy, the U.S. economy .2 percentage points. So, this is not enough itself to put us in recession. However, you take this plus interest rates still being high plus a Fed error, plus student repayments. There’s a lot of these. You keep adding and stacking them. Those are going to continue to weaken this economy. And since we’re kind of at that stage where we’re a little bit nervous about this, this is just another one of those elements that kind of weakens the economy.”
Hill says there are more than 25,700 federal workers in Kansas, and that includes about 5,000 in the Wichita area.
But Hill expressed a lot of federal workers would still report to work and get paid after a possible shutdown.
Meanwhile, Senator Marshall says even with several big pushes in both Congress and the Senate, a shutdown remains possible.
“You know, I think there’s a very good chance that the government shuts down,” said Senator Marshall.