As we creep ever closer to the prospect of a federal government shutdown due to the efforts by some conservative members of Congress to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and attack implementation of our nation’s public health laws, it’s important to understand how a shutdown will impact the health and safety of workers and the public’s health.

It could be said that in this last week of the government’s fiscal year, the unstoppable force of House Republicans is meeting the immovable object of Senate Democrats. Although it may not be quite a fait accompli yet, the likelihood of a government shutdown seems be getting higher each day with no annual spending bills yet passed by Congress and enacted. If a shutdown does occur on Oct. 1 (or at some later point due to a mini-interim spending bill postponing it), what would it look like and how would it affect Americans?

We’ve seen modest improvements in employment since the infamous Great Recession began in 2007, but the recovery has been very slow. We see the evidence all around us – from the 11.3 million Americans who remain unemployed (37.9 percent whom have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more); to the anemic 169,000 jobs created in August; to the 1.8 million home foreclosures reported in 2012.

On Sept. 17, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its 2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook, and it has some great news. Specifically, CBO is predicting substantially lower health care spending this year and 25 years into the future.