Funding for US government

The Republicans continued funding for most parts of the US government until Feb 2, but certain departments' funding will end on Jan 19.

The latter include
• Food and Drug Administration
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Transportation Department
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Energy department
and others.

This will give them an opportunity to threaten to shut down those departments and not the rest of the government. But why those particular departments?

My theory is that shutting those departments would harm a lot of non-rich Americans, but without much blowback from rich people whose support they depend on.

We will see in January the rest of the hostage-takers' strategy.

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