According to USDA statistics, nearly one million women and children in Texas receive WIC benefits. (Estefany Galindo/Borderzine.com)

Federal government closure inflicted hardships and fear of future shutdowns

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EL PASO – During the recent 16-day federal government shutdown, federal workers and hundreds of families in the El Paso area who regularly receive food and medical services under the federally funded WIC program came close to losing their benefits while many others who were eligible to enroll were not allowed into the program. Although the shutdown ended October 17 after Congress raised the debt ceiling, local residents fear that they may find themselves in the same precarious situation again in February when Congress will have to either approve a budget or raise the debt ceiling again. According to USDA statistics via the National WIC Association, nearly one million women and children in Texas could stop receiving WIC benefits. Nationwide, more than 8.5 million women and children receive benefits under the WIC program. Sofia Garcia, a medical assistant at the Upper Valley Urgent Care Center, is mother of a two-year-old and a two-month-old.

US Capitol ©Bobt54

A new political paradigm is at hand like a rough beast slouching toward Washington

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LAS CRUCES, NM – The current political extremism in Washington, D.C., reminded me of Yeats’ poem The Second Coming, especially the lines “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”

Our founders could not have foreseen a time when a small group of right-wing diehards in the U.S. House of Representatives could shut down the government and threaten to damage the American economy because they lost the fight to wreck the hard-fought Affordable Care Act. They started this skirmish under the Capitol dome to kill the health-care law after more that 40 previous failed attempts to damage the law, which was enacted by Congress, signed by the president and upheld by the Supreme Court.  They even ran against it in the last presidential election and lost. An eleventh hour vote accepting a short-term agreement ending the government shutdown and raising the debt ceiling finally passed both houses of Congress after a 16-day impasse, but the measure is only temporary. You might as well get used to this political trench warfare, because like zombies, the extremists never stay underground for long. They will continue lunging at Obamacare forever in the same way the right wing has never stopped attacking Social Security.