A Little Context: Government Shutdowns in History

Unless you've been living under a rock without a smartphone, you're aware that the government of the United States is currently closed for business.  Our current shutdown is the result of the desire of the Republican-controlled House to stop, or at the very least slow down, the launch of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.  I'm not going to go into the whys, wherefores, and whose-faults here, mostly because I've just recovered from a very stressful week and thinking too much about the Republicans currently in Congress is only going to bring my blood pressure back up. I'll let Jon Stewart do that for me; he's much better at it anyway:


Instead, we're going to take a little look at some of the reasons why our Government has shut down in the past.  Government shuts down as the result of an inability of Congress and the President to agree on a budget, or "spending bill."  The current process required to pass a spending bill was implemented in 1976, which is the reason why shut downs began after this date.  Before the 1980s, however, threats of shutdown were not taken particularly seriously.  In times of political conflict the offices of government, as well as the American people, worked on the assumption that Congress would pass a spending bill eventually, and just went about their work as normal.  That all changed in 1980 when Benjamin Civiletti, Attorney General under Jimmy Carter, declared that government work could not go on unless Congress has agreed to pay for it.  Those who continued to work for the government during a shutdown, or "spending gap," were classified as "illegal volunteers" and could not legally continue their work until the political resolution of a spending bill.  This was later softened by a second legal opinion from Civiletti, stating that all "essential" government services could continue work.  These "essential" workers report to work as normal through the shutdown.  Even with this adjustment, Civiletti significantly raised the stakes in future disputes over government spending bills, compelling politicians to reach consensus on spending bills more quickly than they had during the 1970s.



As it was, the United States government "shut down" 8 times during the Reagan administration, once during the first Bush administration, and twice during the Clinton administration.  Shut downs during the 1980s did not last longer than three days.  Here's a quick rundown of the Reagan-era shut downs:

1.  November 20 - 23, 1981:  The Democratically controlled House of Representatives failed to pass a spending bill which included at least half of the $8.4 billion in spending cuts that Reagan proposed.  Government was closed for three days before a temporary bill extended government spending until mid-December, by which time Congress passed a bill for the remainder of the year.
2.  September 30 - October 1, 1982:  Congress was simply late by a day in passing the spending bill.  Major social events prevented the majority of Democrats and Republicans to hold a late-night session to approve the budget.
3.  December 17 - 21, 1982:  Reagan vowed to veto any funding for job programs sent to his desk by the consensus of the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratically-controlled House; the House also opposed Reagan's plans to fund the MX missile.  Congress was forced to abandon its jobs plan, but Reagan was also compelled to pull back funding for the missile.
4.  November 10 - 14, 1983:  The Democratic House cut defense and foreign aid spending, while increasing education spending, which Reagan refused to support.  The defense and foreign aid cuts remained, but the education increase was also abandoned.  In addition, funding for the MX missile, successfully avoided the year before, was approved.  It was also prohibited for government employee health insurance to pay for abortions.  This shutdown occurred over the Veterans' Day long weekend, and so its practical effect was minimal.
5.  October 3 - 5, 1984:  The House linked the passage of the budget to the abandonment of Reagan's anti-crime package and the approval of a water project he opposed.  An extension of three days was passed on September 30th, allowing the government to function until October 3rd.  This expired and forced a shutdown.  Congress was forced to relinquish its water project, while Reagan kept his anti-crime package.
6.  October 16 - 18, 1986:  Shut down was caused by numerous disagreements between the Democratically-controlled House, President Reagan, and the Republican-controlled Senate, including an expansion to "Aid to Families with Dependent Children," which we now call welfare.  It was resolved when the Democratic House gave up a number of its other demands in exchange for securing the expansion of welfare.
7.  December 18 - 20, 1987:  At this time both the House and the Senate were controlled by the Democrats.  Both were in opposition to additional American funds for the Nicuraguan Contras, and wanted to require the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) to recommence enforcing the "Fairness Doctrine," which required news broadcasters to give equal air time to both sides in a political dispute.  The stalemate was broken when Democrats gave up on the Fairness Doctrine and agreed to nonlethal aid only for the Contras.

Phew!  I won't lie, somewhere in my typing, around 1986, my attention started to waiver.  I was shocked to learn that government shut down almost every year of the Reagan administration over a political dispute.  Keep in mind, though, that many of these occured over weekends and public holidays, and so caused minimal economic damage.

The next shut down brings us forward in time a little, to the administration of George H.W. Bush:
8.  October 5 - 9, 1990:  In this case, President Bush the first declared that he would veto, and then proceeded to veto, any spending bill which didn't include a plan to reduce the country's deficit.  The House did not override his veto, and government was shut down.  The House and Senate, both controlled by the Democrats, then added a deficit reduction plan to their bill, which Bush signed in to end the shutdown.

Moving further forward still, we come to Bill Clinton's administration, in which government shut down twice; once for only five days, and once for a whopping 21 days.
9.  November 13 - 19, 1995:  The House added raised Medicare premiums, restricted environmental regulations, and a requirement to balance the budget in seven years, among other things, to the spending bill.  Clinton vetoed it, and government shut down.  Clinton was able to reach a deal with House speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate majority leader Bob Dole which funded the government at 75% capacity for four weeks while they fought out the terms of the budget.  Workers furloughed in this time were given back pay when it was resolved, and Clinton agreed to the Republicans' seven-year timeline for a balanced budget.
10.  December 15, 1995 - January 6, 1996:  The agreement reached by Clinton, Dole, and Gingrich in the last shut down expired.  Clinton's administration produced a budget which would be balanced within seven years, according to the economic forecast of the White House's Office of Management and Budget.  Congress demanded that the budget still be able to be balanced when using the less optimistic economic forecast of their own Congressional Budget Office, which had predicted that Clinton's budget would still produce a $115 billion decifit at the end of the seven years.  The shutdown was an attempt to force Clinton's hand; as it dragged on, however, it became increasingly politically damaging for the Republican Congress, who eventually caved and passed a bill to keep the government running.

Sure enough, that brings us to...

11.  October 1 - ?, 2013:  The current government shutdown is on its seventh day, and shows no sign of being resolved in the immediate future.  At seven days, it is already the second longest governent shutdown in history.

Hopefully this puts our current situation in a little context.  While government shutdowns are nothing new, one has not been implemented as a political tool for 17 years, and this one looks poised to do more damage to the country, both economically and politically, than any in history save for the Clinton-Gingrich showdown of 1995-6.  Hopefully Washington will be able to work out its problems before we reach the number one spot.

Do you still feel uninformed about the causes and effects of the shutdown?  There is a Q&A of shutdown implications over on the USA Today website, which is actually very helpful in explaining the precise effects that the shutdown will have on different areas of government.