The national government, having been shut down for 16 days last month, now faces a new crisis of how to deal with the aftermath of the future for Americans.

The Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, requires that all Americans must have health insurance by January 2014. Citizens will have to pay a fee if they don’t sign up for health insurance by the beginning of 2014. The act was also passed to make healthcare more affordable and accessible to the public, since no one can be denied coverage now. Republicans in the House of Representatives  didn’t want to include Obamacare as something the government’s federal budget would support this next fiscal year.

Because of the House’s opposition, the government shutdown since the budget couldn’t pass through the Republican-dominated House. Because the budget wasn’t approved on time, the government went into a partial shutdown.

Unnecessary workers, like museum, zoo, and national park staff among others, around 80,000 people, according to Time.com, were sent home on October 1. Workers who were deemed essential, like border patrol and active military personnel, continued to work with pay that they would receive later.

During the duration of the partial shutdown, the Senate and the House kept sending potential budgets back and forth for 16 days. Eventually, the Republicans in the House finally caved and allowed for a budget to pass onward to President Obama, who quickly signed it into law.

The House refused to raise the debt ceiling — the amount of debt the U.S. is allowed to be in — and this caused a major issue. The debt was going to hit its limit of $16.7 trillion, according to San Jose Mercury News, and the country would have fallen into default, which would mean they would unable to pay the debt back to who they owe it to.

The new law to reopen the government made it so they will be open until January 15. Therefore, they must come up with a new budget by this date. In order to avoid a possible shut down again, Democratic and Republican leaders from Congress are meeting — in what’s called a conference committee — to come up with a new budget that combines both parties’ ideas.

Idealistically, they should have this budget finished by their ideal deadline of December 13. However, this date isn’t set in stone and, according to CBS News, there is no penalty if they don’t have it finished by then. It’s simply an outline to hopefully keep the government from falling into another shut down once this law expires early next year.

As far as international credibility goes, America’s reputation has been dented, according to The Associated Press. However, because America is a big component to the international economy, there is no expectation the economy will collapse or that everyone will stop trading bonds with America, even though the partial shutdown cost $24 billion, according to ABC News.