Shutdowns Are ‘All Games of Chicken.’ Here’s How They’ve Evolved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/us/government-shutdown-history.html

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With large sections of the federal government shut down, thousands of public employees are bracing to work without pay until Congress and President Trump agree how to spend taxpayers’ money and reconcile ideological differences.

Mr. Trump said he’s prepared for a “very long” shutdown over his demand that a spending bill include $5 billion to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

“It’s very possible that this shutdown will go beyond the 28th and into the new Congress,” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

It’s hardly the first time Congress and the president have faced a budget impasse: There have been at least 21 times in the last four decades that the government hasn’t been able to pass some form of a spending bill on time, according to the Congressional Research Service and news reports.

Whether these so-called funding gaps set off broad shutdowns of federal operations is unclear. For example, in February, there was a brief, hourslong “shutdown” after Senator Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, delayed votes on a budget deal over spending increases, but there was little if any discernible effect on the public.

“If you add in all the near-shutdowns and the almost-shutdowns, you’re talking about 50, 60, 70 shutdowns,” said Linda J. Bilmes, a professor of public policy and public finance at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. “There’s no commonality over how significant the dispute is. It doesn’t have to be over a huge amount of money. It doesn’t have to be an issue of grave import. It just has to be an issue that for whatever political reason can’t be resolved in time.”

Shutdowns have changed over time. Before the 1980s, funding disagreements didn’t lead to such stalemates even if budgets weren’t passed on time.

The 21-day shutdown during President Clinton’s tenure — the longest one ever — upended the political norm that the federal government should at least try to come to a quick agreement on a budget, said Roy T. Meyers, a political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has written about the history of shutdowns.

Still, Professor Meyers said, there’s a common thread: “They’re all games of chicken.”

Here’s a look at how shutdowns came about and have evolved over the years.

Going back 200 years, the federal government would spend money without prior congressional approval, said Jim Broussard, the director of the Center for Political History at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa.

“The executive department, especially the military, would make contracts and then Congress would have to find the money to pay for them or else default on them,” Mr. Broussard said.

According to Professor Meyers, the first continuing resolution, essentially a stopgap funding bill when the annual appropriation wasn’t approved, was passed in 1876.

The roots of modern-day stalemates can be traced to a 1974 law that reorganized the budgeting process, Professor Bilmes said. It shifted more power to Congress from the executive branch and spread it over several congressional committees.

Tense disagreements emerged.

In 1977, for example, the House of Representatives and Senate fought over whether Medicaid should be used to pay for abortions, The Washington Post reported. That led to three separate instances in which the government could not provide funding for the departments of labor and health, education and welfare. After 28 days without funding, a compromise was reached.

Between the 1962 and 1981 fiscal years, there were 32 funding gaps that totaled 291 days, according to the General Accounting Office, now known as the Government Accountability Office.

For years it was common for the government to continue to operate, even if funding bills hadn’t been passed, with the understanding it would eventually get the money approved.

But in 1980 and 1981, the United States attorney general, Benjamin R. Civiletti, issued two opinions that emphasized that approach was illegal and the government could not spend money without congressional appropriations.

What resulted was a tightening of the budget process, Professor Meyers said. That, in turn, prompted an increased frequency of small shutdowns as politicians struggled with deadlines.

In November 1981, President Reagan, in a fight with Congress over $8.5 billion in budget cuts he wanted, ordered the furlough of 241,000 of government employees, the first time a shutdown of that size was ordered, The New York Times reported.

Later that day, Congress passed and the president signed a continuing resolution, according to the Congressional Research Service. A congressional subcommittee estimated that the furlough cost taxpayers between $80 million and $90 million, including administrative costs, such as figuring out who could and couldn’t work and paying workers who didn’t end up working.

A half-day shutdown in 1986 led to the furlough of 500,000 workers, costing taxpayers more than $62 million in lost work, The Times reported. A three-day shutdown of national parks and museums in October 1990 was estimated to cost nearly $1.7 million, including lost work and administrative costs.

The biggest shutdown came in 1995.

At issue was a long-term budget backed by Republicans, who swept into office halfway through President Clinton’s first term. Among other things, their plan had limited spending for Medicare and turned Medicaid and most other welfare programs over to the states.

House Republicans, in particular, were keen on using a shutdown to get Mr. Clinton to sign their bill, and resisted his preference that the government be reopened during negotiations, The Times reported.

The government was closed down for 21 days. The shutdown was preceded by an almost weeklong stalemate in November over similar issues (which is, incidentally, when Mr. Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky began).

In January 1996, Congress voted to put 760,000 federal workers back on the payroll and reopened a number of federal departments.

The shutdown that began in 1995 and continued into the beginning of 1996 helped pave the way for the 2013 shutdown over President Obama’s health care law. That lasted for 16 days, as Republicans ultimately failed to strip the law of funding or delay its implementation.