US House OKs spending bill, ending government shutdown
February 9, 2018
The US government shutdown has ended after the House voted to pass a stopgap spending measure. The Senate's failure to pass the bill before the stroke of midnight had led to a temporary freeze of federal funds.
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Rand Paul holds up Senate budget vote
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The US House of Representatives voted 240-186 in favor of a two-year budget deal, ending a government shutdown that started in the early hours of Friday morning and concluded within six hours.
The government shut down for the second time in 2018, after Republican Senator Rand Paul held up voting on the spending bill and forced Congress to miss its midnight deadline on a new federal funding structure.
Paul, a fiscal conservative from the state of Kentucky, said he could not allow a quick vote to take place because the proposed measure — which would fund the government for another six weeks — would also expand the US deficit. "I ran for office because I was very critical of President Obama's trillion-dollar deficits," he said. "Now we have Republicans hand in hand with Democrats offering us trillion-dollar deficits."
"I can't... in good faith just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits. Really, who is to blame? Both parties."
US government shutdowns: A chronology
President Joe Biden's government is facing a shutdown if the Republican Congress doesn't approve the budget for the coming fiscal year. DW looks at how shutdowns started, when they became partisan and how much they cost.
Image: Getty Images/D. Angerer
Sundown shutdown
As midnight approaches on September 30, it's go time for Congress: Approve a budget before the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, or shut down the government. Originally, Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution required lawmakers to approve the budget. Honing it further in 1870, the Antideficiency Act targeted agencies that spent money without asking. But deadlines were often missed.
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No money, no pay, no work
At the behest of President Jimmy Carter, the US attorney general revisited the Antideficiency Act in 1980 to answer the question: "Without a budget, are government employees required to work?" According to his Attorney General's legal opinion, no money meant no work. Carter's presidency saw only small shutdowns, but the new interpretation of the law turned shutdowns into a negotiating tactic.
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Ronald Reagan and the first shutdown
The first real shutdown — more than 240,000 workers furloughed, more than $80 million (€65 million) down the drain — occurred in November 1981. President Ronald Reagan refused to sign a budget without billions in tax cuts. The Republican-controlled Senate and the Democrat-controlled House found a solution the next day. This happened seven more times by his last year in 1989.
Image: AP
Bill Clinton and the rise of the partisan shutdown
Budget impasses were largely drama-free until 1995, when President Bill Clinton faced off against Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (pictured left). The Republican-led Congress wanted a balanced budget within seven years, higher Medicare premiums and rollbacks on environment regulations. It took 27 days in total to strike a deal. The cost: at least $1 billion.
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A game for Congress, a headache for the agencies
Many departments such as the military, national security and any deemed essential to the protection of life continue working during shutdowns. But agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must cease operations. This results in delays on tax decisions, food inspection and disease research among other problems.
Image: picture-alliance/BSIP/B. Boissonet
Barack Obama and Congress on Cruz-control
The next major shutdown came in 2013 under President Barack Obama. His Affordable Health Care Act — or Obamacare — faced stark opposition from conservative House Republicans. Led by Senator Ted Cruz, the group pushed for drastic curbs on the health care act in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The 18-day shutdown resulted in the furlough of some 850,000 workers. The cost: $24 billion.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/C. Dharapak
Shutdown for a wall
The longest shutdown in US history so far lasted 35 days in December 2018 and January 2019. Hundreds of federal workers went without paychecks. Despite the disruption, then-President Donald Trump insisted that funding for his Mexico border wall be included in the budget. In fact, Trump had said he was prepared for the impasse to go on for years — before he gave in and reopened government.
Image: Doug Mills/UPI Photo/Imago Images
Cost of playing politics
The prohibitive cost of shutting down some government operations has not tamed the trend. Washington loses millions not just in revenue, but also in back pay, even though furloughed employees stay at home. So, time lost, work lost — and money lost. According to a 2019 estimate by ratings agency Standard and Poor's, a government shutdown costs the US roughly $6 billion per week.
Image: Imago
Shutdowns contributing to distrust?
The biggest loser is not the economy, or the party that makes the most concessions, it's the government itself. According to a Gallup poll in the aftermath of the 2013 shutdown, public dissatisfaction with the government in general rose to 33%. The previous all-time high regarding political dysfunction was 26% during the Watergate scandal.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Kaster
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Senate officials subsequently held a vote at 1 a.m. local time (0600 UTC) to approve the budget bill by 71 votes to 28, passing it on to the House of Representatives for a vote in the early hours.
Paul's move to delay the vote drew the ire of Democrats and fellow Republicans, who accused the senator of wasting time to draw attention to himself. Democratic Representative Nita Lowey accused GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate of turning the budget process into "an embarrassing spectacle, running from one crisis directly into the next."
After passing through the House, the spending bill was sent to US President Donald Trump, who tweeted that he had signed it into law, adding that "we love and need our military."
Deficit discontent
Democratic and Republican Senate leaders cobbled together the budget deal on Wednesday. It would raise military and domestic spending by nearly $300 billion (€250 billion) over two years.
To permit the spending, the deal would also raise the limit on how much debt the government can acquire until March 2019. Total US debt currently stands at more than $20 trillion. The sweeping tax overhaul bill that Trump and Republicans approved in December is estimated to add another $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years.
House Republicans, Democrats unhappy
The Senate had been expected to pass the budget deal on Thursday, allowing first the House of Representatives and then President Trump to follow suit.
But passage in the House was not assured amid opposition from some Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Members of the "Freedom Caucus" — a group of fiscally conservative House Republicans — announced they would oppose the measure, citing the projected increase in the government deficit.
The government was forced to shut down for three days in mid-January after the Senate failed to pass a stopgap budget amid Democratic demands for a deal to protect "Dreamers."
Democrats abandoned their opposition after three days, allowing the Senate and House to pass a temporary spending bill on January 23.
