Deadline missed, government shuts down for first time in 17 years

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

For the first time in nearly two decades, the federal government staggered into a partial shutdown early Tuesday morning after congressional Republicans stubbornly demanded changes in the nation’s health care law as the price for essential federal funding and President Barack Obama and Democrats adamantly refused.

As Congress gridlocked, Obama said a “shutdown will have a very real economic impact on real people, right away,” with hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed and veterans’ centers, national parks, most of the space agency and other government operations shuttered.

He laid the blame at the feet of House Republicans, whom he accused of seeking to tie government funding to ideological demands, “all to save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party.”

Barack Obama, socialist sympathizer , calling patriots extremists.