The federal government entered a partial shutdown Tuesday, Oct. 1 as Congress failed  to pass a spending bill to fund the government for another fiscal year. According to CNN, more than 800,000 federal employees are temporarily unemployed. However, essential government responsibilities are still receiving funding, such as Social Security and Congress’ pay.

It’s sad Congress can’t agree to put the country first instead of focusing on party politics, Republicans stubbornly using the negotiations over the national budget to try to lessen the effect of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and Democrats stubbornly refusing. But it’s even more sad that I, a 16-year-old high school student, have to tell them it’s sad.

Maybe they should have attended my last AP US History class. In it, we discussed the Constitution and how it’s a huge mass of compromises. The very system that pits the Republican-controlled House of Representatives against the Democrat-controlled Senate was a compromise.

We’ve strayed so far from the mentality of our Founding Fathers. As any good AP US student will tell you, George Washington warned the country against political parties, which were already forming at the time, in his farewell address. This warning was promptly ignored, and the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans grew further and further apart.

Perhaps a history lesson would benefit Congress. Perhaps they could see that by sticking so vehemently to the ideas of their parties, they are only losing the support of the people instead of gaining it.

Take a lesson from Thomas Jefferson. In our AP US textbooks, each chapter starts with a quote. His quote beginning Chapter Seven is, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” The two political parties may have been different at the time, but the message is still the same.

We are all Democrats, we are all Republicans.