The U.S. government is on the precipice of doing something it hasn’t done since 1995: shut down. Congress currently is mulling the decision to take action and prevent a shutdown on oct. 1.

The House of Representatives met Friday, Sept. 20, to address the issue of the debt ceiling. The House voted on whether to pass a funding bill that will continue to fund the federal government.

Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, said he is appalled the Republican House leader “brought a bill to the floor to make a political point that has no hope of doing what we need to get done.”

Braley said he wishes the events had gone differently.

“We need to stop playing political games and do the work the people of Iowa sent us up there to do,” Braley said. “And that’s to solve these tough problems and provide predictability for the American people.”

Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science, agreed the House is playing political games.

“I think the Republicans are playing a game of chicken and, at the last minute, will pass something,” said Schmidt.

The bill was passed in the House on Friday and now is expected go to the Senate on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he predicts the Democrat majority in the Senate will not pass the bill.

Grassley said that even though it will probably create some problems for some members, the Democrat majority does not want to defund the health care law. He said he believes they will amend that portion out and send it back to the House.

The House will be faced with a clean continuing resolution bill, which means that discretionary funding could reach approximately $988 billion, Grassley said.

In order to do that, 100 percent of next year’s sequester spending cuts for nondefense programs and services and about 60 percent of the automatic defense spending cuts would have to be endorsed by Congress.

“I think that we have the capabilities of finding a bipartisan agreement like we did in August 2001, and like we did after Christmas last year, and I think we will find that,” Grassley said.

Braley said last Friday that the Senate is likely to “strip out the provisions that attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act and pass a continuing resolution that will continue to pay for the federal government.”

Braley also said he is confident the House Republican leadership will shut down the federal government unless something of a dramatic change were to happen.

If the federal government were to shut down, a ripple effect would occur.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said that in the case of a government shut down, a good amount of economic activity will slowly start to erode.

For Iowans, everything from Social Security to farm committees to meat factories will shut down. The people who work for the federal government will lose income.

“I think that nobody wants to shut down the government, and there will be solutions and compromises found,” Grassley said.