 US senators in a last minute vote passed a spending bill that averted the shutdown of some government departments. Now this was part of the finalizing of the budget that has become a very politicized affair. The bill's future became uncertain due to pressures from a group of Republicans who wanted spending cuts across the board. Of course the crisis overall is not over yet as several more departments budgets are yet to be voted on and we can expect more fireworks in the coming days. We talk to Anish about this. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. So government shutdowns have become quite a common thing in the United States. The possibility of it every year. There is a frantic round of negotiations that takes place for weeks ahead of this. So could you tell us about the latest spending bill? What was it about? Why was it a threat, so to speak, to the functioning of the US government? We can have debates about whether the government is functioning at all. But nonetheless, how? Yeah, so what we're looking at is the word close to a half a trillion dollar budget. Essentially it's a budget that is going to be used in pretty much every major thing that not just runs the US government, but also a large part of the United States as well, funding for housing, transportation, veteran care, pensions, whole host of things that require funding. And it should have started. It should have been done and enacted by October 1st. But we have a very problematic and obstacle-ridden Congress right now, which pretty much tries to hold hostage millions of Americans every angle they get. And primarily it is obviously the Republicans are at fault here. But nevertheless, the Democrats are not really pushed for anything substantial either. So what we often have is weeks of negotiations. It's not that every year there is a timely enactment of the spending bills. Very often it goes until September, sometimes November. But the fact that it has delayed so far and for so long essentially going into pretty much one half close to one half of a financial year or US financial year clearly shows that the US government, the Congress is becoming more and more polarized on a whole host of issues. A small group of Republicans right now have significant control by holding hostage a whole lot of things that are essential for the government. And not just government, but also for the people of the United States. Many of whom depend on a large amount of these funding to actually make things work for their lives. And let's also talk about the amount of the budget here. What we're looking at is a substantially smaller number than the defense bill that was passed much earlier. Obviously that too had its own set of controversies. But right now it is set to run close to about 900 billion dollars. So what we're looking at is pretty much half of that, about a 460 billion dollars of budget for things that are essential for Americans while the war machine gets funded with bipartisan support. And this clearly shows the priorities of the US Congress, the US leadership as a whole who are far more keen on getting the defense budgets passed. And even right now the bigger controversy and the bigger debate is about the 100, 120 billion dollars or so of additional spending in military for to aid Ukraine and Israel's war machines. So pretty much the full debate right now, the US national debate is being centered around funding war machines and not whether or not they should be funded but by how much they should be funded. So it is clearly the priorities are all wrong at this point where essentials are not as prioritized as the military budgets. Right Anish of course now coming further to that point, how do you also see this as a kind of reflection of the sort of dysfunctional political structure itself considering how the two-party system has evolved, the fact that now, you know, crisis or this kind of sense of being stuck seems to be default as far as US Congress is concerned. Yes, so obviously this was nothing new but over the past decade or so we have seen far more such confrontations between the two parties but mostly around things that really don't affect most of the people. Like for instance a big part of the opposition for even this current spending bill is that the Republicans, a large number of Republicans were arguing that it is too much to spend on basic essentials that there should be a trimming down of budget. Even though the military spending remains untouched, it pretty much goes through much smoothly than any other debates that we are seeing but the fact that, you know, spending on housing, spending on transportation, spending on infrastructure, things that are quite necessary are not really given the same value that among the US leadership and it clearly shows that like far more vested interests are in control, like it clearly shows the failure of US democracy which where lobbying money has more influence than actual votes where leaderships are far more cut off from people's aspirations, their needs, their wants than they are to say corporate money and their interests that they pretty much represent in the US Congress. So much of the debates pretty much surround on bills and resolutions or proposals that affect and impact corporations, like when they talk about border control, it is going to go into private corporations that include the prison system, the defense system, the private, you know, arms industry, but none of that really affects when it comes to stuff like transportation or housing, these are not, these are going into people's office because money is not coming from there to lobby for that, you do not have that interest being represented as well. So this clearly shows like obviously the oligarchy is powerful but it is just the nitty gritty of how they want to control the US system that pretty much divides them, not the whether or not they want to represent people's aspirations. Thank you so much for the update but do stay back, we'll come to a country which the US has an outsized influence on in the next story. Our next story is from the Korean Peninsula where South Korea's unification ministry has come up with a new plan for bringing the two countries together. The new plan is the first review of the department's agenda since 1994. Now this is a significant development since tensions have been on the rise in the region since the right-wing government of Yoon So-kyul took office in Seoul. North Korea meanwhile has also taken a strong stand on this issue in previous months. We go back to Anish for some details on the story. Welcome back Anish, so new document, a new plan by South Korea's reunification ministry this time, we'll come to the North Korean side in the next question. But what is this plan, the first revision in I believe almost 30 years to what the reunification means for South Korea? Yes, so the current plan is quite interesting because it is pretty much a departure from the existing set of plans that have always informed South Korean governments in the past. Right now what we're looking at is a very vague set of formulations. You do not really see a clear blueprint of what they want to, how they want to achieve unification of the Korean Peninsula. But if you look at some of the values that they're trying to present, which is like the value of human freedom or, you know, reunification and democracy, it's pretty much a cover for a whole host of other things that the conservative South Korean government wants to do. We must remember the history of reunification or the debate around reunification. The conservatives in the South have been the biggest opponents of that, because they often felt that earlier understanding and structure or debates around reunification have always been in favor of the communist. That's how they looked at it, because reunification meant reconciliation, meant, you know, forming a loose confederation with the North in some ways as a goal and through that achieve reunification. The whole point was to reconcile with the war that actually divided the Korean Peninsula and to create a stable peaceful system that can actually work for both sides. That is not something that the conservatives ever wanted. They always opposed reunification whenever it was brought up, including during the last peace process. The conservatives were the biggest opponents of the entire peace process. So their reunification plan has nothing, has no talks about how to achieve peace. They're talking about peace, but peace based on expanding democracy or expanding liberty. This is the kind of idea that they're saying, which is pretty much a mask of saying that they want to essentially invade at some level North Korea and bring it under the pretty much liberal electoral system that the South Koreans have. And that is definitely just an attempt to stoke some level of nationalism and also in some ways attract or maybe shed their anti reunification stand that they've had in the past considering the fact that the elections are quite near. And we are actually sitting on a very interesting point in time when it comes to the Korean, the trajectory of Korean War, which technically continues to this day, that in this whole process, what we're looking at is that the North, which was always called for reunification, even if it meant making concessions to the government in the South, is now against it. And while the South right now is trying to present itself as pro reunification by actually making statements or the plan actually showing that they want to essentially expand democracy, which essentially means that they want to pretty much break down the North Korean government. They want to expand the propaganda machinery, saying that they want to enlighten the people of the North to against their government, against the human rights violations and whatnot, pretty much telling us that there will be enough government funded propaganda machinery against the North that will be operating within North Korea. So that clearly shows that this is a more confrontational policy than any kind of any idea of reunification that pretty much inform reunification advocates in the past. Well, Anish, also quickly, could you tell us a bit about how North Korea has been approaching this issue? It also made some recent announcements about the issue of reunification as well. Yes, as I said, it's a very interesting but also kind of tragic times that we are living in where the North has pretty much given up. Like we have reached a point where the North has given up on reunification as an ultimate goal. It also looks at the South as an enemy entity. Now, it is trying to move any relations with the South, the Southern government from the reunification which no longer exists to the department that now handles foreign affairs, clearly showing that it is going to see it as an alien and a foreign and obviously enemy state or a hostile state to the North and clearly showing that this hostility has reached a very problematic stage. And we must keep reminding our viewers that peace was pretty much very close to reach just a few years ago and it was derailed not just by the Conservatives in the South, like the Yonsek Yol government, but also even under the Moon Jae-in government that pushed for the peace process because of the interventions by the United States. So the whole peace process was possible. It was possible and it could have actually created reconciliation on a long-term basis, but that has all been derailed right now because the Conservatives here, the beleaguered Conservative government wants to regain whatever lost popularity that it has lost over the past couple of years because of its misadministration and also because the Empire wants the South to be more belligerent with the North right now. Thank you so much, Anish for that update. And that's all in this episode of Daily Deep Brief. We'll be back with a new episode on Monday. Meanwhile, do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.