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  3. As midnight on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s

As midnight on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s

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问题    As midnight on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s government. To a wondering world, the recriminations missed the point. When you are brawling on the edge of a cliff, the big question is not "Who is right?" , but "What the hell are you doing on the edge of a cliff?"
   The shutdown itself is tiresome but bearable. The security services will remain on duty, pensioners will still receive their cheques and the astronauts on the International Space Station will still be able to breathe. Some 800,000 non-essential staff at federal agencies (out of 2.8 million) are given leaves without pay, while another 1.3 million are being asked to toil on without pay. Non-urgent tasks will be shelved until a deal is reached and the money starts to flow again. The trouble is, the shutdown is a symptom of a deeper problem: the federal lawmaking process is so polarized that it has become paralyzed. And if the two parties cannot bridge their differences by around October 17th, disaster looms.
   It gets worse. Later this month the federal government will reach its legal borrowing limit, known as the "debt ceiling" . Unless Congress raises that ceiling, Uncle Sam will soon be unable to pay all his bills. In other words, unless the two parties can work together, America will have to close which of its obligations not to honor. It could slash spending so deeply that it causes a recession. Or it could default on its debts, which would be even worse, and unimaginably more harmful than a mere government shutdown. No one in Washington is that crazy, surely?
   In the long term, America needs to tackle polarization. The problem is especially acute in the House, because many states let politicians draw their own electoral maps. Unsurprisingly, they tend to draw ultra-safe districts for themselves. This means that a typical congressman has no fear of losing a general election but is terrified of a primary challenge. Many therefore pander to extremists on their own side rather than forging sensible centrist deals with the other. This is no way to run a country. Electoral reforms, such as letting independent commissions draw district boundaries, would not suddenly make America governable, but they would help. It is time for less cliff-hanging, and more common sense.

The U.S. government shutdown will bring about the following results EXCEPT_____.
选项 A、another 1.3 million non-essential staff will be forced to work
B、government will continue to pay the security expenses
C、U.S. citizens’ retirement benefits will not be affected
D、about 800,000 federal employees will be fired
答案D
解析 细节题。根据题干关键词定位到第二段。该段第三句前半部分提到“联邦政府机构280万员工中的800 000名非关键岗位工作人员休无薪假”，而并非被开除。故D项不符合文意，为正确答案。
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