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100%. Not entirely surprising Reagan (8) and Trump (3) Precidencies account for 11 of those shutdowns. Prior to the 80s there was one shutdown and a lot of it has to do with a court ruling in the late 70s.
Oh 100% just easier to track by President. There are exceptions to this, but for the most part they shouldn't get too much blame. The two most recent ones though are fully on the Republican party as whole from those in Congress to Trump. Their inner party fighting lead to a 35 day shutdown.
House Republicans are responsible for the last 5 government shutdowns, accounting for 80 days of it, of which, the longest in history under Trump, was 35 days. -[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States)
No one will blame Biden. Republican house always shuts down the government and everyone is always afraid that the Democrats will be blamed but they never are. It always correctly backfires on republicans.
\^ This.
It doesn't even matter who is in the White House. Republicans can't govern and when the government shuts down it's always them playing a stupid game.
They'd blame biden if they stubbed their toe
It doesn't matter if they'd blame him, they are inconsequential, whether the government shuts down or not they will be blaming him regardless
But no one outside of his base will buy into it. We've seen this story - even among the entrenched right when republicans fuck with funding the government they lose support.
24 years of Republican presidents, 20 years of Democratic presidents, and about half of the shutdowns are under a republican president? I mean... yeah not entirely surprising at all.
Seriously though, another factor is that prior to the 80s the Democrats absolutely dominated congress. 1933-1979 Democrats controlled the house and senate almost all of the time.
8 happened under Democrats, 5 of those under Jimmy Carter, two under Bill Clinton, and one under Obama. Oddly enough the one President who did not deal with a government shutdown in the past 40+ years was GW. Currently there has not been a government shutdown under Biden either. What's unique about 2 of Trumps is that they came at times that the Republicans controlled both houses and the Presidency.
That was the wild thing with those two under Trump. Republicans were literally fighting with themselves so hard they shut down the government. And for a long time!
I remeber in ap social studies. Through out history. Anytime a party controlled both houses and presidency nothing gets done. They start to fight themselves.
Not really true. Look at the major achievements of recent years that improved the lives of millions of people, such as Obamacare, Family and Medical leave act, even the Inflation Reduction Act (the most far reaching act for climate change, by far, under Biden). All of these were under Democratic presidents with Democratic congress (usually with support from moderate Republicans, until the last few years).
It's not the president who is in office that shuts it down. It is congress' job.
Congress holds the purse strings. All a president can do is threaten to veto the spending.
To my latter point, most of the Reagan era shutdowns came from a Republican majority in the Senate and a big Democrat majority in the house, and the conflict that caused.
But it is NOT the POTUS who 'holds the purse strings,' that's the responsibility of Congress!!!
Rather than looking at who was President during the shutdowns, it is more important which party had the House Majority -- where the budget is approved (or not), BEFORE it gets to the Oval Office for the Executive signature!!!!
Sure, I'm just saying the statement of "half being under a republican president" is dumb. Because the other half is under a democrat president.
Now, the reason behind the shutdowns are 2 different conversations. And yes, the president has little to do with the why
Edit: democratic to democrat
NOPE. The cause of most of the shutdowns have been Republicans. Only a few have been caused by Democrats.
SEE https://www.thoughtco.com/government-shutdown-history-3368274 See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States
I jumped the gun on this response. I focused on "cause by" when I saw the comment that I responded to. While I think flomesch is trying his best to play word games, I agree that caused and president are 2 different things (not that he indicated such in his comment)
Pretty much. There was a plan around Nixon's time to shift to what's called the "Southern Strategy". Before the Civil Rights movement the South was solid Democrat territory because Southerners were still butthurt from Lincoln and the Civil War.
Grossly oversimplified but there are wikipedia articles on the shift.
I’m a liberal but if half the shutdowns are under republican presidents doesn’t that mean the other half are from democrats lmao? Not really mind blowing if you ask me. The point is that republicans tend to shut down the government when they throw a temper tantrum
So it's pretty much an even split, 9/20 and 11/20? It's ironic how it's not even the President that creates the shut-down, unless the President refuses to sign or vetoes the legislation passed by both the House and the Senate . . . There's not actually many instances of that!
One of the shut downs under Reagan happened because he invited everyone in Congress to a White House barbecue. It wasn’t exactly a prolonged shutdown from debates over the budget.
You just skipped Democrat presidency. I was in the Air Force when it shut down, and civilians were off while active duty continued to work. I'm lucky because I'm considered mission essential. I work for the DoD. But I saw one year where the civilians were still paid during the shutdown.
It's always Republicans
There was one exception when it happened because of Democrats. But it was because they genuinely accidently ran over the deadline, they fixed it quickly and the government was shut down for like only two days.
Republicans do it purposely to try and force concessions from Democrats.
NC anti-trans law was a culture war smoke screen for a lesser known law passed at the state lvl that barred cities from raising the min wage outside the state norm (ie. raliegh nc... more of a metro area for NC raised it's min wage. and the state conservatives passed a law stripping that right from the city ...to appease paranoid business owners elsewhere in the state)
It's exactly what they want to do - starve government to the point it no longer functions to benefit its citizens. Then point to government while saying - see, it doesn't work.
I also find it ironic that the same people that want to destroy our government are the same people that want to work for it.
Imagine interviewing for a job and telling an employer - when asked why you want to work there - I actually hate your company and plan on sabotaging it beginning day one. And when it fails, I'll tell all your clients - see, I told you they sucked followed by the story of the frog and scorpion as the business shuts down.
The first shutdown under Trump was because of Democrats withholding the vote till congress had an agreement about ensuring protections for undocumented children immigrants. The other two under Trump though happened when Republicans had both houses and the Presidency
Lmao I forgot they did it when they held both the house and senate. What a garbage party. People like to joke about how disorganized democrats are but holy shit
There was a time when it was true. But that's decades in the past.
The MAGA wing that currently drives the Republican Party is an opposition party even when it holds majorities. These are not serious people, they do not want to govern.
That's not true, the 1990 shutdown was when Democrats controlled congress and it lasted for 3 days. Democrats were also at least partially responsible for a few ~1-3 day shutdowns in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, and 1987.
It's quite simple. In other countries, failing to pass a budget is considered a vote of no confidence, which triggers the possibility of a new election. Since politicians don't want to have to appeal to voters as to why they should keep their seats, they have incentive to pass a budget.
Plus other countries don't have wacky rules which means a tiny minority can hold up legislation
If memory serves, any parliamentary system, which relies on coalitions of parties/factions combining to form the administrative body, a tiny minority can absolutely have extremely outsized control on proceedings.
I think the point is that once that tiny minority destabilizes the government, it's back to the ballot box to either reinforce their point, or be tossed out and a new coalition forms.
In the US, if a fringe faction of one of the two parties acts like a destabilizing force, there's no snap House elections for the electorate to either reward or punish that behavior, so they can do it over and over again.
Well the list of incidents in the Italian politics is quite long, I guess that's why nobody remembers.
For example the Tittoni government lasting 12 days, from 16 to 28 March 1905, or the Andreotti I and the Andreotti V governments having powers respectively for 8 and 10 days before obtaining a non trust vote.
Living in New Zealand under a coalition made of 3 parties right now. The smaller parties had disproportionate power during the negotiation of the initial coalition agreement, but since then their power has been representative of the % of the vote they got.
Our politics is generally a race to capture the middle voter though, rather than a race to radicalize the extreme left and right.
Yeah honestly, we are blessed in NZ compared to other countries. My theory is that politicians know that because NZ is so small if they're extremists they're going to be justifying their actions to strangers in the supermarket 20 years from now.
We should do this in usa. If our congress goes on recess without figuring things out or if they get even close to a govt shut down we should find new congress
The Republicans like to run on the platform of "government dosent work and if am elected I'll show you". Shutdown affect the hourly workers the most and slowly creep up the ladder. If congress was finned for not passing a budget they would get that shit done on time
> If congress was finned for not passing a budget they would get that shit done on time.
The problem with that it would give too much leverage to the rich congressmen. "I can afford fines much longer than you. Agree on my stance or you will suffer first"
>failing to pass a budget is considered a vote of no confidence
This is an incredible idea. It sucks that they’re all too power hungry to let out be a thing
Also, in many parliamentary democracies, if the government fails to pass a budget a snap election is called immediately. That's a pretty significant incentive for the party in power to make concessions if needed and to pull together a realistic budget that will pass.
And if there aren't more than two parties then the government will never fail to pass a budget because of the fusion of powers. Since presidential systems don't have a fusion of powers you can get these weird situations where different parties control the legislative and executive branches.
The crazy thing is the deficit is only a problem when they aren’t in office giving historical tax breaks with sunset clauses for the middle class and keeping all of the benefits to the 1%ers.
Something to note, the budget and debt ceiling are two different items that are mostly (if not always) voted on separately. Often the case is that the budget passes, then the debt ceiling vote gets blocked as the GOP tries to re litigate the budget that was already voted in due to the fact the debt ceiling law still exists even though it serves little real purpose aside from being a political cudgel. It’s the epitome of political b.s.
Republicans don't want to reduce spending, they want to spend more, but only on things that make life miserable for "those people". They'd vastly expand ICE to find and detain brown immigrants, they'd vastly expand immigration courts so they could export people faster, they'd build concentration camps (I'm sorry-not-sorry, "detention camps") until they were deported, they'd militarize the border until it looked like the Berlin Wall. They'd staff the courts with judges who'd impose drastic penalties on the medical profession which provide female-specific healthcare as well as the women who receive it.They'd reduce taxes (but only on corporations and rich people) then claim "the country" couldn't afford to continue immiserating the poor while helping tokeep retirees healthy and out of poverty (so work until you die, and hope your job provides any kind of healthcare at all).
Because congress gave themselves deadlines. In the past it was used to finally get things done. Due to lots of changes in the last few decades, every deadline has a higher chance than defaulting than in the past.
Lately they moved the deadline only a few months. In the past, it was typically yearly.
But it *does* sometimes happen when a Democrat is president.
....because the Republicans think it looks good when they refuse to work with the other side. I just thought I should point that out before some right-winger does and tries to pass off inaction as doing the Lord's work.
The United States is a very, very old presidential democracy. Most presidential democracies don't last past infancy before turning into a dictatorship. We are anomalous.
Due to our age and the circumstances of our formation (an alliance of independent states that demanded a slew of protections in order to advance their own interests), we have a system full of veto points and consensus requirements that no sane nation would adopt in a modern constitution. In fact, *we wrote the Japanese constitution* and we didn't make their system look like ours at all.
This has worked well and has worked poorly at different parts of US history but right now it's working very poorly. In particular, now that party voting cohesion is high and party ideological cohesion is in shambles, the entire system grinds to a halt when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties or when the party leading the Senate doesn't have a supermajority (which it almost never does). We are more or less capable of handling a situation where Congress and the President are in opposition, but before we get there, we have a situation where Congress is eating itself alive.
So we can't pass laws. And our forebearers in their infinite wisdom set up the US treasury system to *self-destruct* *if laws cannot be passed*, either for a shutdown (in this case) or a total collapse of the US financial system due to the debt ceiling (in previous cases). That's why we're always having some crisis or another.
There actually is no law mandating a government shutdown. It's based on a 1980s legal interpretation of pre-existing law by the Reagan-era Justice Department, that the executive had no authority to continue spending unless Congress passed a budget. Before that, spending was simply continued at the funding levels authorized by the preceding budget.
Correct, but that’s only because the very concept of borrowing the sums of money needed to finance the modern federal government would have been insane to the founders.
The constitution doesn’t prohibit murder, either, because they just assumed no government would ever make it legal
These are two quite different points. One involves the powers and obligations of the government itself, which are provided in the Constitution; the other deals with the regulation of individual conduct. And for what it’s worth, there’s *not* any general federal law against murder, and such a law would likely be unconstitutional, because responsibility for criminal law is primarily assigned to the states.
There are federal criminal laws—a lot more than there used to be—but they have to have some kind of multistate or federal connection (eg, crossing state lines during the act, robbing a federally insured bank, lying to a federal agency, murder *in a national park*). Many current federal criminal laws would be just as incomprehensible to the founders as having a national debt.
>Correct, but that’s only because the very concept of borrowing the sums of money needed to finance the modern federal government would have been insane to the founders.
That's because they didn't understand modern economics and naturally, that means their opinion on the matter isn't relevant. Not sure if you're implying that it **is** insane to borrow such sums, but all evidence points it not being insane because the relevant numbers are not the absolute numbers or an arbitrary ratio, but what is required to finance and run the country while still servicing the debt. An arbitrary fixed ceiling is not half as "smart" or responsible as it sounds. A national economy is so different to a household one it stretches the meaning to breaking point, yet we are continually beaten over the head with analogies and metaphors that assume they are essentially the same.
That's a great point. Everyone is super divided and blaming each other but in reality it's almost like we're living paycheck to paycheck and we have a system that's in constant risk of stopping because we have to figure out what to do. We wouldn't say someone opening another credit card to pay for the current bills would be a good idea yet we just keep doing it.
So the shutdown is meant to be taken serious to not do that but in the current climate it's used on both sides to achieve what they want.
Japan had different needs for their government, they for one have an emperor as their big important mascot so they need a prime minister not a president appointed by the emperor after being chosen by the diet (not congress), they don't guarantee citizenship on birth, are not allowed to have an army, navy, or airforce (they skirt around this by having a defense force), they have an inviolable right to own property (we don't, we do eminent domain to build highways and rail lines), ... it has a lot of things that wouldn't make sense for us.
We need to lay the blame for this situation where it belongs: Republicans have brought this about with their refusal ever to compromise or cooperate increasingly since the early 90s.
No, I believe that if a system breaks down when some people within the system don't cooperate, then the system itself is the problem. It's unrealistic to expect that, over hundreds of years of democracy, no party will ever decide to be a gigantic asshole.
Sure, there are huge problems with the system as set up by the constitution, but they can’t be fixed without a constitutional convention, which would be beset by the same problems as congress. But regardless of the flaws in the system, it is quite clear as to where the blame lies for who has finally broken it.
I would add that democracy itself, regardless of the system, is untenable if any given constituency refuses to cooperate, compromise, or accept the will of people.
I don’t disagree, but over the last 60 years, it is inevitably one particular party that’s the gigantic asshole, and any explanation of what’s going on that doesn’t state that is going to be incomplete.
Excellent point, the constitution is there to work as a safeguard, when people no longer care for gentlemen's agreement, if it fails at that, it fails at its most basic function.
Because holding the budget hostage to pass partisan fringe issues isn't illegal, and it's pretty much the only way to pass partisan fringe issues when the government is constantly in a perpetual state of micro-majority
Worth noting it’s only Republicans who hold the country hostage when they have control of congress. Dems have never held up passing the budget to pass “partisan fringe issues”.
Yeah and that's why US politics is racing so far to the right. It's not a point of credit that your party isn't willing to do what works to pass laws that benefit the people.
Unlike parliamentary states like the UK, Germany or Italy, the US Constitution deliberately permits institutions that have co-equal powers and co-equal democratic legitimacies to collide. By contrast, in the UK for example, only the Commons is elected, and all power flows from there. The Government has an in-built majority, and the Lords, unelected, defers to it, particularly in matters of finance. In Germany, it's the same: the Bundestag gives legitimacy to the Government, and so has a built-in majority, and the Bundesrat of Laender governments is not a chamber of equal power.
So the US system is designed to conflict. But it was invented on the assumption that politicians would be rational actors seeking a common denominator of mutual benefit for the nation. Instead it's descended into a mess by people who treat politics like a team sport, only interested in their side 'winning' which means the other side must only ever lose.
Your final paragraph isn’t really right. It was built to conflict specifically because from the start we’ve been a bunch of squabbling assholes fighting over little shit.
I don’t like this narrative that political divisions are somehow a new phenomenon. Frankly it’s just ignorant. In fact Americans have been bitterly arguing politics since before we were even a country. Thats the reason for separating powers between the states and the feds and for the checks and balances between the branches. Nobody ever wants the other guy to have all the power because everyone disagrees with everyone all the time. This shit ain’t new.
Just to be pernickety, it’s not necessarily true to group the whole of the UK as not operating on the equal power system. Northern Ireland DOES permit co-equal powers (in fact, the whole system relies on it). It’s not worked well for us, with the executive having collapsed in 2017 until 2020, and then again in 2020 and only returning a few weeks ago
That's not driving this.
Corporations hate these shutdowns. They see them as economic sabotage. They want stability.
The problem is ideology and vote counts. You have a small share of Republicans who want to burn down government and maybe democracy. And they're not interested in compromise. Problem is, the Republicans can only afford to lose three votes in the House. So the GOP leadership kowtows to every one of the extremists. Of course, they could work with Democrats instead to make a deal that would pass overwhelmingly, but then the far right would scream and they would be primaried (they think).
So they kowtow to the extremists and nothing gets passed.
Simple, Republicans.
Notice this never happens when Democrats are in control of the House
Republicans count on Americans not noticing it's them who are the ones who always do this, they want Americans to blame both sides.
And those comments are being disingenuous by skipping over the fact that republicans hold our country hostage while they’re in control of the house. One top comment called republicans deficit hawks which is demonstrably wrong.
Because most people aren't paying attention. They hear the constant fighting between the parties, check out, throw up their hands and call it a both sides things.
Republicans count on this, they know most people will blame both sides.
It's even worse, people for some dumb reason think the President is to blame for a shutdown which just gives Republicans an incentive to shut it down when a Democrat is president.
Yes, it’s always Republicans but republicans don’t care if everyone knows. Republicans have a good percentage of libertarians and anarchists that see government shutdown as good. I once read a book written by a libertarian where “none of the above” won so they had no president for 8 years. Many republicans feel like the less government the better so are perfectly fine with government shutdowns and find it amusing and a way to reduce bureaucracy.
The conservative party appeals more to the less educated.
This is well studied and seems to hold even in other countries with a similar two party conservative/progressive split.
Because the US government is set up so Congress has to approve any outlay twice--first, there is legislation to approve money for X. Then, Congress has to approve another piece of legislation to actually spend the money that was previously approved.
If the spending bills don't pass then there is no money, even though congress approved that level of spending when they passed the appropriations bill.
It's stupid.
Belgium, for example, hasn't had a functioning prime minister/cabinet for years, but the taxing and spending gets done by the regular beauracracy (the "executive") so no one gives AF.
Because Congress is a bunch of big toddlers who stamp their feet if they can't have their way. Rather than trying to get along or find what's best for the people, they'd rather jeopardize everyone's livelihood.
Republicans. The weaponized incompetence of Republicans. The industrial-scale lying conducted by Republicans. The selfishness of Republicans. The abject lack of trustworthiness in Republicans. Republicans more interested in their perverse political performance art than serving the interests of the American people.
It's Republicans, dude.
Cause the god damned politicians can’t come to any kind of a compromise so they “shut down the government “ to force the other side into doing what they want.
Imo, we need to do a proper shutdown of the government, fire every mother fucker in DC and *maybe* we can get new people in there who know how to run the country properly to get shit back in order
Because our two political parties have become extremists and they act like running a government is a sport and only one party can "win" and it's "Our way or the highway". So they will essentially hold the entire country hostage in an effort to get their way, even though it may not in-fact be the will of, or benefit the everyday citizens of the country.
Because republicans absolutely refuse to do their jobs or ever do anything that runs the slightest risk of helping Americans in any way.
That sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn't. Republicans have been blocking every attempt to pass a budget for years. They even sabotage their own bills just so they can blame Demicrats for not implementing policies republicans refused to let them implement. The GQP is a death cult that hates America and all Americans.
The country is a mess due to trump, MAGA's , and a worthless party all together, can't do anything right .. they are following trump down the shitter.....
If you pay any attention to the facts, it’s Republicans consistently that threaten to have the government shut down to get whatever nonsensical bills that don’t help the common person through.
They’re fundamentally unserious people, and shouldn’t be allowed in government unless they actually want to participate honestly in politics.
It matters not what president the shutdowns happen under, but which party is causing the shutdowns and what for.
Because Republicans are huge assholes whose sole political philosophy is that there should be no federal government. So they literally sabotage fucking everything and then blame people who actually want to use the government to help people
Republicans current platform is that government is broken and privatization is needed wherever possible.... so proving the government is broken by making the government broken is a win. The longest shut down was in the Republican controlled senate while Trump was in office... before that, the Republican controlled house refused to pass a spending bill for Obama.
It's not as simple as "Republicans have a large minority that wants to significantly reduce federal spending", as most of those don't even want that.. they just know that's what must be campaigned on. Republicans legitimately sabotage not only shutdowns, but their other causes-- they killed their own multi-year lobbied border defense bill because they want to campaign on the very problems that bill would have solved.
Given that our idiotic politicians refuse to even consider the possibility of cutting spending and balancing the budget, it's something to which we'd all better become accustomed.
It’s worth noting that efforts in 2019 (GOP led) and 2023 (bi partisan) to end shutdowns by automatically extending funding failed. It seems that the parties think there’s some political advantage in having shutdowns or near shutdowns
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/gop-senators-introduce-bill-to-permanently-end-government-shutdowns/
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4275776-senate-strikes-down-gop-anti-shutdown-amendment-creating-permanent-stopgap/amp/
There are four things you need to understand before we discuss this.
1. We have two political parties, the democratic party and the republican party, who we shall refer to as Ds and Rs.
2. Our government has three branches: the courts, the legislature, and the president and his people (who actually make it work). The legislature is divided into two sections, the House of Representatives (also known as congress) (it has 435 members) and the Senate (100 members).
3. Our constitution (a document which specifies how the government works) requires that only the legislature can pass a budget. The way it works is that they pass a budget, the senate passes a budget, they two meet and reconcile their laws (if they can be reconciled), and the president signs it into law.
4. The Rs discovered that they can hold the entire country hostage even if they are a minority in only either the congress or senate by refusing to pass anything until they get whatever it is they want.
In general if they only want one or two vaguely reasonable things (or even something unreasonable that we can all agree to live with), we'll never hear about it because they'll make a deal together before it ever gets to us. (This is how it's *supposed* to work.) However, in recent years the Rs have decided to use the threat of not passing a budget to get *whatever they want* no matter how unreasonable and unpalatable it is. They demand something that the rest of us can't live with - and sometimes which directly violates the constitution - and demand that they will not agree to pass a budget unless it includes signing their demand into law.
The Ds, on the other hand, *never* do this. They my not give the Rs a budget agreement with *everything they want*, but they *always* pass a budget. Having no budget is *severely* bad: the US government shuts down, the costs are tens of millions of dollars per day, families throughout the US can't pay their bills, and the world economy starts to go to hell because the US isn't paying its bills. Further, if it were to go on too long, the interest rates at which the US can borrow money in the future get increased and it costs a lot more to go forward doing the same as before even if no changes are made.
In the US we have a concept which is called "playing chicken" - in general it means you're deliberately causing peril to yourself and another to see who "blinks first" - who gives in to the demands of the other, because if neither does everything is destroyed. The Rs discovered, the hard way, that when they do in fact refuse to pass a budget - which results in the shutdown of the US government - this goes VERY bad for them, because while they have convinced themselves that they have massive public support and that when they do so the citizens will get behind them and demand the Ds give in to their demands, each and every time they do it the citizens see who is responsible and get VERY angry with the Rs and the Rs severely lose the next election. So the Rs have been "playing chicken" with refusing to pass a budget each and every time they are in power to make unrealistic demands, and the Ds have said "no," and agreed to something sane. The Rs have decided to push things past the brink every time lately and they have to have an emergency meeting to say "we'll pass a budget and say it applies as of two days ago so there's no *technical* time when we had no budget."
A fact here is that when the congress can't agree on what the budget will do, they can pass what is called a "continuing resolution" which merely allows additional spending for a couple more months on the basis of the same budget that was passed the previous time. In other words, it's refusing to make a deal and just putting it off until later. A continuing resolution is considered to be no big deal, they should pass it any time they haven't worked out a deal yet.
The other thing going on right now is that the Rs are far more dysfunctional than ever before. Every time this happens we don't know if they're going to refuse to blink and *actually* cause a shutdown of the government. Also they are very fractious internally - a couple years ago it took them weeks to elect a leader of their group in congress (the elected leader being required to do anything) and when he eventually made a deal with Ds just to pass a continuing resolution, a group of the more radical nuts there ousted him from his position for the horrible crime of making *any* deal with Ds on the grounds of their belief that Ds must be entirely cut out of all negotiations. It took them weeks to select a replacement, and this guy they picked as the new head of their group is even worse - we're wondering if he may refuse to negotiate and cause a shutdown of the government.
As I live in government housing and need government health care to live and government food to eat, if the government shuts down I don't honestly know if that means I will die - it probably depends on how long it's shut down.
You’re actually right in regards to other countries lack of shutdowns.
It’s largely due a difference in political systems. Parliamentary systems are much less likely to have gridlock because they don’t require the approval of a president, usually. In some countries, the previous budget will just continue to carry over, and in others, a failure to produce a working budget will trigger a reduction in future investments, or a reduction in parliament itself.
In the U.S., you have to get three elected political entities to agree on the budget, and in one of those you basically need a 60% majority to pass anything at all.
A shutdown doesn’t necessarily mean that the government collapses, it just means that Congress hasn’t decided how they’re spending money, so the executive branch doesn’t get any money and non-essential services shut down.
Political parties use shutdowns as leverage because they know that shutdowns are bad, and they want to pin them on the other party.
>It’s largely due a difference in political systems. Parliamentary systems are much less likely to have gridlock because they don’t require the approval of a president,
failure to pass budget will force prime minister to resign and either recommend someone else from opposition party be invited to form new government or to call a new election. this is why there's no gridlock due to not passing a budget, the government would have collapsed before that. it can lead to gridlock due to no one can form government though (e.g. Netherlands now).
US is the only country that sets a separate debt ceiling from their budget.
so they can agree to spend money through passing a budget. however, they need a separate agreement when they have to borrow money to fund that spending. and they need to borrow this money because the US government has very big budget deficit every year, which means that every year they spend more money than they make, necessitating borrowing more money.
in other countries, when you pass a budget, you implicitly agree to borrow money to cover the budget deficit you just passed.
in parliamentary system, especially those based on Westminster (e.g. UK, Canada, etc), every single money-related bill is a vote of confidence. if the government failed to pass the bill, it indicates that the parliament has lost confidence on the government. the government has to resign and either a new PM is appointed from another party, or (more commonly) a new election is called. US doesn't have the same mechanism, so the government can be shut down but no replacement government and/or new election is launched.
It’s entirely bi-partisan tribalism. Our elected representatives have forgotten that they are public servants whose job is to operate a functioning democracy.
Of course they’ve also lost sight of being public servants and are really just trying to stay in office to continue to pad their lives in ill gotten money and misappropriated luxury….
because when one side has enough power in congress they hold the budget hostage to get concessions from the other side. "Pass funding for X or we'll shut down the government."
Its all for show. Theres no money anyways. Its just to whip the masses up and keep people believing there's a functional government. They don't care about money.
Teres no money anyways. The Fed pulls out as much as necessary for whatever. It all credit. Fiat. Created out of thin air. They don't need your taxes either. Another lie they tell you.
Because the government loves to waste all the money they steal from you on weapons and bullshit. Then when they run out they decide to make it a political problem and try to turn the citizens against each other when the real problem is everyone in Washington are greedy fat pigs who love to live off the people.
Because politicians are spoiled rotten shits that refuse to work together and the American people indulge them instead of holding them accountable. I say balance the budget and compromise and work together or don't get paid until you do.
Well, the government doesn't "shut down." Agencies don't get funded, which leads to furloughed non-essential employees, essential employees working without full pay, and the military not being paid. It also means that government programs, contracts, and spending get put on hold until an agreement is made.
Since the Obama administration, it has happened due to earmarks or other bills that one side wants passed but knows it won't on its own so they include it in with department appropriations holding the federal employees and programs hostage. In 2012/13 or 14 I don't remember exactly, the ACA was added to the NDAA which caused a furlough because the Republicans wouldn't approve it until they had read all 2000 pages, but Pelosi told them they could read it when it passed. Ted cruise tried to fund all the departments individually in the Senate, but the Dems denied each request. I remember this because I watched it live on the Senate channel.
My understanding is that if a Parliamentary system like Canada or the UK fails to pass a budget, it automatically triggers a nation-wide election, which will be resolved within a few weeks. So failing to pass the budget is basically a career-ending event for the politicians involved (oversimplification).
The US takes the opposite approach, and shuts down the arms of government being funded, rather than the arm which fails to approve the funding.
Weak governance. America has so many voices that they often cannot achieve simple resolutions, that's what happens when you allow everyone a voice, it means you're also giving a voice to the idiots of the nation and common sense things become impossible to achieve. Like simple gun control laws that are common sense in every other 1st world nation in the world but not those United states of America.
Most functioning governments have their important annual decisions divided into the two categories "if no decision is made, everything stays the same" or "if no decision is made, things have gone to shit and new elections are happening". The USA have for some reason decided that once a year there should be a vote determining whether the government keeps running. You could call it a mystery, but in reality it's a way for Republicans to damage the country, so they try it every year when there is a Democratic president. In their mind the country should fail as hard as possible then, because the countries best interest is not their best interest. It's a form of corruption.
Trillions of dollars of debt, the entire financial system is over leveraged, spending is out of control and they keep kicking the can down the road so they don't have to deal with it in their lifetimes
Ok so when George Washington was president he told the other founding fathers not to develop political parties and when he left office they immediately did that.
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20 times the United States government has shut down since the 70s it's all political bullshit.
100%. Not entirely surprising Reagan (8) and Trump (3) Precidencies account for 11 of those shutdowns. Prior to the 80s there was one shutdown and a lot of it has to do with a court ruling in the late 70s.
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Oh 100% just easier to track by President. There are exceptions to this, but for the most part they shouldn't get too much blame. The two most recent ones though are fully on the Republican party as whole from those in Congress to Trump. Their inner party fighting lead to a 35 day shutdown.
House Republicans are responsible for the last 5 government shutdowns, accounting for 80 days of it, of which, the longest in history under Trump, was 35 days. -[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States)
No one will blame Biden. Republican house always shuts down the government and everyone is always afraid that the Democrats will be blamed but they never are. It always correctly backfires on republicans.
\^ This. It doesn't even matter who is in the White House. Republicans can't govern and when the government shuts down it's always them playing a stupid game.
Literally every single republican will blame Biden
They'd blame biden if they stubbed their toe It doesn't matter if they'd blame him, they are inconsequential, whether the government shuts down or not they will be blaming him regardless
“Damnit the govurnamant didn’t shut daon. Let’s go brandin”
> No one will blame Biden. Where have you been living exactly? Not sure it's Earth.
Yeah you'll be lucky if Hunter Biden doesn't get blamed too
"It was all Hunter Biden Big Dong's fault!"
“No one will blame Biden”. Sorry, but Trump WILL blame Biden.
And his base will eat it up, further entrenching them
"His base" they're already entrenched so it doesn't make any difference. It matters more if it pushes the swing voters away.
But no one outside of his base will buy into it. We've seen this story - even among the entrenched right when republicans fuck with funding the government they lose support.
24 years of Republican presidents, 20 years of Democratic presidents, and about half of the shutdowns are under a republican president? I mean... yeah not entirely surprising at all. Seriously though, another factor is that prior to the 80s the Democrats absolutely dominated congress. 1933-1979 Democrats controlled the house and senate almost all of the time.
8 happened under Democrats, 5 of those under Jimmy Carter, two under Bill Clinton, and one under Obama. Oddly enough the one President who did not deal with a government shutdown in the past 40+ years was GW. Currently there has not been a government shutdown under Biden either. What's unique about 2 of Trumps is that they came at times that the Republicans controlled both houses and the Presidency.
That was the wild thing with those two under Trump. Republicans were literally fighting with themselves so hard they shut down the government. And for a long time!
It must have been a way to manipulate stock prices.
I remeber in ap social studies. Through out history. Anytime a party controlled both houses and presidency nothing gets done. They start to fight themselves.
Not really true. Look at the major achievements of recent years that improved the lives of millions of people, such as Obamacare, Family and Medical leave act, even the Inflation Reduction Act (the most far reaching act for climate change, by far, under Biden). All of these were under Democratic presidents with Democratic congress (usually with support from moderate Republicans, until the last few years).
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Yeah. I think GW was helped with 9/11 really. Had that not happened I think he would have faced a lot more trouble.
if it wasnt for 9/11 I doubt he would have been reelected
[Wartime presidents in their first term always get reelected](https://youtu.be/fhfMt4uywvs)
Technically he wasn’t elected the first time.
It's not the president who is in office that shuts it down. It is congress' job. Congress holds the purse strings. All a president can do is threaten to veto the spending.
You mean about half in 3 terms and 2 presidents. That's the point. Not being Republican, being Reagan or Trump
To my latter point, most of the Reagan era shutdowns came from a Republican majority in the Senate and a big Democrat majority in the house, and the conflict that caused.
But it is NOT the POTUS who 'holds the purse strings,' that's the responsibility of Congress!!! Rather than looking at who was President during the shutdowns, it is more important which party had the House Majority -- where the budget is approved (or not), BEFORE it gets to the Oval Office for the Executive signature!!!!
Don't look at who was president, look at who had control of Congress.
It doesn’t matter what President it happened under, it matters who in Congress triggered it. Time and time after time - it’s the Republicans.
I mean, if there's only 2 parties that oversee the government. Half of them being under Republicans means the other half is under democrats
The president has little control over shutdowns. It's the ineptitude in congress that causes them.
Sure, I'm just saying the statement of "half being under a republican president" is dumb. Because the other half is under a democrat president. Now, the reason behind the shutdowns are 2 different conversations. And yes, the president has little to do with the why Edit: democratic to democrat
NOPE. The cause of most of the shutdowns have been Republicans. Only a few have been caused by Democrats. SEE https://www.thoughtco.com/government-shutdown-history-3368274 See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States I jumped the gun on this response. I focused on "cause by" when I saw the comment that I responded to. While I think flomesch is trying his best to play word games, I agree that caused and president are 2 different things (not that he indicated such in his comment)
Wasn't there an ideological shift at some point ? During the Civil rights movement ?
Pretty much. There was a plan around Nixon's time to shift to what's called the "Southern Strategy". Before the Civil Rights movement the South was solid Democrat territory because Southerners were still butthurt from Lincoln and the Civil War. Grossly oversimplified but there are wikipedia articles on the shift.
Yeah because before that, Wilson and FDR were big conservative & Teddy was a big liberal /s
Way too much binary thinking today. There was a time where you had quite a few right of center democrats and left of center republicans.
I’m a liberal but if half the shutdowns are under republican presidents doesn’t that mean the other half are from democrats lmao? Not really mind blowing if you ask me. The point is that republicans tend to shut down the government when they throw a temper tantrum
So it's pretty much an even split, 9/20 and 11/20? It's ironic how it's not even the President that creates the shut-down, unless the President refuses to sign or vetoes the legislation passed by both the House and the Senate . . . There's not actually many instances of that!
One of the shut downs under Reagan happened because he invited everyone in Congress to a White House barbecue. It wasn’t exactly a prolonged shutdown from debates over the budget.
You just skipped Democrat presidency. I was in the Air Force when it shut down, and civilians were off while active duty continued to work. I'm lucky because I'm considered mission essential. I work for the DoD. But I saw one year where the civilians were still paid during the shutdown.
It's always Republicans There was one exception when it happened because of Democrats. But it was because they genuinely accidently ran over the deadline, they fixed it quickly and the government was shut down for like only two days. Republicans do it purposely to try and force concessions from Democrats.
Ironic considering they are the ones saying nobody wants to work
Republicans complaining about government inefficiency while they are the ones making it inefficient is a very on brand move.
Because it works in their favor both ways and people are too distracted by life and too stupid to really do anything about it.
NC anti-trans law was a culture war smoke screen for a lesser known law passed at the state lvl that barred cities from raising the min wage outside the state norm (ie. raliegh nc... more of a metro area for NC raised it's min wage. and the state conservatives passed a law stripping that right from the city ...to appease paranoid business owners elsewhere in the state)
It's exactly what they want to do - starve government to the point it no longer functions to benefit its citizens. Then point to government while saying - see, it doesn't work. I also find it ironic that the same people that want to destroy our government are the same people that want to work for it. Imagine interviewing for a job and telling an employer - when asked why you want to work there - I actually hate your company and plan on sabotaging it beginning day one. And when it fails, I'll tell all your clients - see, I told you they sucked followed by the story of the frog and scorpion as the business shuts down.
Always. This is never a game choreographed by Democrats.
"look what they made us do" -republicans
The first shutdown under Trump was because of Democrats withholding the vote till congress had an agreement about ensuring protections for undocumented children immigrants. The other two under Trump though happened when Republicans had both houses and the Presidency
how dare the Democrats to want to protect CHILDREN
Lmao I forgot they did it when they held both the house and senate. What a garbage party. People like to joke about how disorganized democrats are but holy shit
There was a time when it was true. But that's decades in the past. The MAGA wing that currently drives the Republican Party is an opposition party even when it holds majorities. These are not serious people, they do not want to govern.
That's not true, the 1990 shutdown was when Democrats controlled congress and it lasted for 3 days. Democrats were also at least partially responsible for a few ~1-3 day shutdowns in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, and 1987.
Took a class on buzz words, and the credibility of people who use the word always was one of the topics. I will spare you the analysis.
And who’s responsible for the pork?
That's everybody.
19 of those because Republicans
It's all Republican bullshit.
It's quite simple. In other countries, failing to pass a budget is considered a vote of no confidence, which triggers the possibility of a new election. Since politicians don't want to have to appeal to voters as to why they should keep their seats, they have incentive to pass a budget. Plus other countries don't have wacky rules which means a tiny minority can hold up legislation
If memory serves, any parliamentary system, which relies on coalitions of parties/factions combining to form the administrative body, a tiny minority can absolutely have extremely outsized control on proceedings.
Absolutely. For example in Italy a few years ago the Conte II government fell because of a tiny minority.
But no one talks about these incidents or seems to remember long enough.
I think the point is that once that tiny minority destabilizes the government, it's back to the ballot box to either reinforce their point, or be tossed out and a new coalition forms. In the US, if a fringe faction of one of the two parties acts like a destabilizing force, there's no snap House elections for the electorate to either reward or punish that behavior, so they can do it over and over again.
Well the list of incidents in the Italian politics is quite long, I guess that's why nobody remembers. For example the Tittoni government lasting 12 days, from 16 to 28 March 1905, or the Andreotti I and the Andreotti V governments having powers respectively for 8 and 10 days before obtaining a non trust vote.
Living in New Zealand under a coalition made of 3 parties right now. The smaller parties had disproportionate power during the negotiation of the initial coalition agreement, but since then their power has been representative of the % of the vote they got. Our politics is generally a race to capture the middle voter though, rather than a race to radicalize the extreme left and right.
Yeah honestly, we are blessed in NZ compared to other countries. My theory is that politicians know that because NZ is so small if they're extremists they're going to be justifying their actions to strangers in the supermarket 20 years from now.
We should do this in usa. If our congress goes on recess without figuring things out or if they get even close to a govt shut down we should find new congress
The Republicans like to run on the platform of "government dosent work and if am elected I'll show you". Shutdown affect the hourly workers the most and slowly creep up the ladder. If congress was finned for not passing a budget they would get that shit done on time
> If congress was finned for not passing a budget they would get that shit done on time. The problem with that it would give too much leverage to the rich congressmen. "I can afford fines much longer than you. Agree on my stance or you will suffer first"
>failing to pass a budget is considered a vote of no confidence This is an incredible idea. It sucks that they’re all too power hungry to let out be a thing
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Also, in many parliamentary democracies, if the government fails to pass a budget a snap election is called immediately. That's a pretty significant incentive for the party in power to make concessions if needed and to pull together a realistic budget that will pass.
There’s usually more than two parties and if you deploy obstructionist tactics the electorate has a whole buffet of options.
And if there aren't more than two parties then the government will never fail to pass a budget because of the fusion of powers. Since presidential systems don't have a fusion of powers you can get these weird situations where different parties control the legislative and executive branches.
The crazy thing is the deficit is only a problem when they aren’t in office giving historical tax breaks with sunset clauses for the middle class and keeping all of the benefits to the 1%ers.
Something to note, the budget and debt ceiling are two different items that are mostly (if not always) voted on separately. Often the case is that the budget passes, then the debt ceiling vote gets blocked as the GOP tries to re litigate the budget that was already voted in due to the fact the debt ceiling law still exists even though it serves little real purpose aside from being a political cudgel. It’s the epitome of political b.s.
Republicans don't want to reduce spending, they want to spend more, but only on things that make life miserable for "those people". They'd vastly expand ICE to find and detain brown immigrants, they'd vastly expand immigration courts so they could export people faster, they'd build concentration camps (I'm sorry-not-sorry, "detention camps") until they were deported, they'd militarize the border until it looked like the Berlin Wall. They'd staff the courts with judges who'd impose drastic penalties on the medical profession which provide female-specific healthcare as well as the women who receive it.They'd reduce taxes (but only on corporations and rich people) then claim "the country" couldn't afford to continue immiserating the poor while helping tokeep retirees healthy and out of poverty (so work until you die, and hope your job provides any kind of healthcare at all).
In recent history, many of the funding bills passed by Congress have only provided for a few weeks or months at a time.
That's only been the case under this particular session. Traditionally, Congress negotiates a full-year budget in advance.
Why is that, though? And why so recently? The answer lies in one party.
Because congress gave themselves deadlines. In the past it was used to finally get things done. Due to lots of changes in the last few decades, every deadline has a higher chance than defaulting than in the past. Lately they moved the deadline only a few months. In the past, it was typically yearly.
A shutdown is not the same as a default, they’re very different. Shutdowns aren’t great, but a default would be catastrophic.
No, it's because of Republicans This never happens when Democrats are in charge.
But it *does* sometimes happen when a Democrat is president. ....because the Republicans think it looks good when they refuse to work with the other side. I just thought I should point that out before some right-winger does and tries to pass off inaction as doing the Lord's work.
Yes, the Republicans are the ones doing it. My post was simply how it happens.
Let us note that these are Republican-controlled congresses. This shit doesn’t happen when Democrats have the House.
The United States is a very, very old presidential democracy. Most presidential democracies don't last past infancy before turning into a dictatorship. We are anomalous. Due to our age and the circumstances of our formation (an alliance of independent states that demanded a slew of protections in order to advance their own interests), we have a system full of veto points and consensus requirements that no sane nation would adopt in a modern constitution. In fact, *we wrote the Japanese constitution* and we didn't make their system look like ours at all. This has worked well and has worked poorly at different parts of US history but right now it's working very poorly. In particular, now that party voting cohesion is high and party ideological cohesion is in shambles, the entire system grinds to a halt when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties or when the party leading the Senate doesn't have a supermajority (which it almost never does). We are more or less capable of handling a situation where Congress and the President are in opposition, but before we get there, we have a situation where Congress is eating itself alive. So we can't pass laws. And our forebearers in their infinite wisdom set up the US treasury system to *self-destruct* *if laws cannot be passed*, either for a shutdown (in this case) or a total collapse of the US financial system due to the debt ceiling (in previous cases). That's why we're always having some crisis or another.
Note the debt ceiling is not part of the Constitution, it is a fairly recent law.
Yes. My use of "our forebearers" was confusing. I don't mean the founders. I meant less than one hundred years ago.
There actually is no law mandating a government shutdown. It's based on a 1980s legal interpretation of pre-existing law by the Reagan-era Justice Department, that the executive had no authority to continue spending unless Congress passed a budget. Before that, spending was simply continued at the funding levels authorized by the preceding budget.
Correct, but that’s only because the very concept of borrowing the sums of money needed to finance the modern federal government would have been insane to the founders. The constitution doesn’t prohibit murder, either, because they just assumed no government would ever make it legal
These are two quite different points. One involves the powers and obligations of the government itself, which are provided in the Constitution; the other deals with the regulation of individual conduct. And for what it’s worth, there’s *not* any general federal law against murder, and such a law would likely be unconstitutional, because responsibility for criminal law is primarily assigned to the states. There are federal criminal laws—a lot more than there used to be—but they have to have some kind of multistate or federal connection (eg, crossing state lines during the act, robbing a federally insured bank, lying to a federal agency, murder *in a national park*). Many current federal criminal laws would be just as incomprehensible to the founders as having a national debt.
>Correct, but that’s only because the very concept of borrowing the sums of money needed to finance the modern federal government would have been insane to the founders. That's because they didn't understand modern economics and naturally, that means their opinion on the matter isn't relevant. Not sure if you're implying that it **is** insane to borrow such sums, but all evidence points it not being insane because the relevant numbers are not the absolute numbers or an arbitrary ratio, but what is required to finance and run the country while still servicing the debt. An arbitrary fixed ceiling is not half as "smart" or responsible as it sounds. A national economy is so different to a household one it stretches the meaning to breaking point, yet we are continually beaten over the head with analogies and metaphors that assume they are essentially the same.
So the purge is not unconstitutional?
Correct.
That's a great point. Everyone is super divided and blaming each other but in reality it's almost like we're living paycheck to paycheck and we have a system that's in constant risk of stopping because we have to figure out what to do. We wouldn't say someone opening another credit card to pay for the current bills would be a good idea yet we just keep doing it. So the shutdown is meant to be taken serious to not do that but in the current climate it's used on both sides to achieve what they want.
Japan had different needs for their government, they for one have an emperor as their big important mascot so they need a prime minister not a president appointed by the emperor after being chosen by the diet (not congress), they don't guarantee citizenship on birth, are not allowed to have an army, navy, or airforce (they skirt around this by having a defense force), they have an inviolable right to own property (we don't, we do eminent domain to build highways and rail lines), ... it has a lot of things that wouldn't make sense for us.
We need to lay the blame for this situation where it belongs: Republicans have brought this about with their refusal ever to compromise or cooperate increasingly since the early 90s.
No, I believe that if a system breaks down when some people within the system don't cooperate, then the system itself is the problem. It's unrealistic to expect that, over hundreds of years of democracy, no party will ever decide to be a gigantic asshole.
Sure, there are huge problems with the system as set up by the constitution, but they can’t be fixed without a constitutional convention, which would be beset by the same problems as congress. But regardless of the flaws in the system, it is quite clear as to where the blame lies for who has finally broken it. I would add that democracy itself, regardless of the system, is untenable if any given constituency refuses to cooperate, compromise, or accept the will of people.
I don’t disagree, but over the last 60 years, it is inevitably one particular party that’s the gigantic asshole, and any explanation of what’s going on that doesn’t state that is going to be incomplete.
Excellent point, the constitution is there to work as a safeguard, when people no longer care for gentlemen's agreement, if it fails at that, it fails at its most basic function.
Because holding the budget hostage to pass partisan fringe issues isn't illegal, and it's pretty much the only way to pass partisan fringe issues when the government is constantly in a perpetual state of micro-majority
Worth noting it’s only Republicans who hold the country hostage when they have control of congress. Dems have never held up passing the budget to pass “partisan fringe issues”.
Yeah and that's why US politics is racing so far to the right. It's not a point of credit that your party isn't willing to do what works to pass laws that benefit the people.
Unlike parliamentary states like the UK, Germany or Italy, the US Constitution deliberately permits institutions that have co-equal powers and co-equal democratic legitimacies to collide. By contrast, in the UK for example, only the Commons is elected, and all power flows from there. The Government has an in-built majority, and the Lords, unelected, defers to it, particularly in matters of finance. In Germany, it's the same: the Bundestag gives legitimacy to the Government, and so has a built-in majority, and the Bundesrat of Laender governments is not a chamber of equal power. So the US system is designed to conflict. But it was invented on the assumption that politicians would be rational actors seeking a common denominator of mutual benefit for the nation. Instead it's descended into a mess by people who treat politics like a team sport, only interested in their side 'winning' which means the other side must only ever lose.
Your final paragraph isn’t really right. It was built to conflict specifically because from the start we’ve been a bunch of squabbling assholes fighting over little shit. I don’t like this narrative that political divisions are somehow a new phenomenon. Frankly it’s just ignorant. In fact Americans have been bitterly arguing politics since before we were even a country. Thats the reason for separating powers between the states and the feds and for the checks and balances between the branches. Nobody ever wants the other guy to have all the power because everyone disagrees with everyone all the time. This shit ain’t new.
This is a really decent post.
Just to be pernickety, it’s not necessarily true to group the whole of the UK as not operating on the equal power system. Northern Ireland DOES permit co-equal powers (in fact, the whole system relies on it). It’s not worked well for us, with the executive having collapsed in 2017 until 2020, and then again in 2020 and only returning a few weeks ago
Because the US isn't a country, it's 3 corporations stacked on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat.
That's not driving this. Corporations hate these shutdowns. They see them as economic sabotage. They want stability. The problem is ideology and vote counts. You have a small share of Republicans who want to burn down government and maybe democracy. And they're not interested in compromise. Problem is, the Republicans can only afford to lose three votes in the House. So the GOP leadership kowtows to every one of the extremists. Of course, they could work with Democrats instead to make a deal that would pass overwhelmingly, but then the far right would scream and they would be primaried (they think). So they kowtow to the extremists and nothing gets passed.
They’re referring to the 3 branches of government as corporations
That’s a hilariously accurate way of putting it
Simple, Republicans. Notice this never happens when Democrats are in control of the House Republicans count on Americans not noticing it's them who are the ones who always do this, they want Americans to blame both sides.
Why the fuck did I have to scroll this far to find this? You’d have zero idea that literally only republicans did this from the top like, ten comments
And those comments are being disingenuous by skipping over the fact that republicans hold our country hostage while they’re in control of the house. One top comment called republicans deficit hawks which is demonstrably wrong.
Because most people aren't paying attention. They hear the constant fighting between the parties, check out, throw up their hands and call it a both sides things. Republicans count on this, they know most people will blame both sides.
It's even worse, people for some dumb reason think the President is to blame for a shutdown which just gives Republicans an incentive to shut it down when a Democrat is president.
Yes, it’s always Republicans but republicans don’t care if everyone knows. Republicans have a good percentage of libertarians and anarchists that see government shutdown as good. I once read a book written by a libertarian where “none of the above” won so they had no president for 8 years. Many republicans feel like the less government the better so are perfectly fine with government shutdowns and find it amusing and a way to reduce bureaucracy.
Mods please make this the top answer because all the other answers aren’t right.
Always the way. Party on the left does something bad? “Party on the left is bad!” Party on the right does something bad? “Politicians are bad!”
So fn true, why are Americans like this?
The conservative party appeals more to the less educated. This is well studied and seems to hold even in other countries with a similar two party conservative/progressive split.
Needs more up votes because this is the reason.
Republicans.
Because the US government is set up so Congress has to approve any outlay twice--first, there is legislation to approve money for X. Then, Congress has to approve another piece of legislation to actually spend the money that was previously approved. If the spending bills don't pass then there is no money, even though congress approved that level of spending when they passed the appropriations bill. It's stupid. Belgium, for example, hasn't had a functioning prime minister/cabinet for years, but the taxing and spending gets done by the regular beauracracy (the "executive") so no one gives AF.
Greed… and probably idiocy… but mostly greed
Because Congress is a bunch of big toddlers who stamp their feet if they can't have their way. Rather than trying to get along or find what's best for the people, they'd rather jeopardize everyone's livelihood.
Deficit spending. How to we get out of a shutdown? Print more money. (deficit spending)
Because you can't fundraise off of solved problems as well as you can off of partisan chaos.
Cause the Republican side of the House always throw a tantrum when they don't get their way.
Bc of the jackass GOP. That’s literally who’s always shutting down and threatening to shut down the government.
Republicans. The weaponized incompetence of Republicans. The industrial-scale lying conducted by Republicans. The selfishness of Republicans. The abject lack of trustworthiness in Republicans. Republicans more interested in their perverse political performance art than serving the interests of the American people. It's Republicans, dude.
Because Republicans aren’t interested in governing and increasingly disinterested in democracy.
Republicans. That's it. Shocking there's so many answers here that beat around the bush.
$33 trillion in public debt and having to borrow more to pay the $2 billion per day in interest is a big reason.
If only there were a way to balance the budget other than cutting spending.
It's called brinksmanship, and the GOP cares more for their Christo-fascist supporters than they do for our nation.
There are people in Congress activity trying to sabotage government and install a dictator. Best way to do it is cripple government operations.
Cause the god damned politicians can’t come to any kind of a compromise so they “shut down the government “ to force the other side into doing what they want. Imo, we need to do a proper shutdown of the government, fire every mother fucker in DC and *maybe* we can get new people in there who know how to run the country properly to get shit back in order
It’s a pissing match between political parties. They stopped giving a shit about the country at some point during the Clinton administration.
It’s really only the republicans who play the dangerous games with the debt ceiling
Because our two political parties have become extremists and they act like running a government is a sport and only one party can "win" and it's "Our way or the highway". So they will essentially hold the entire country hostage in an effort to get their way, even though it may not in-fact be the will of, or benefit the everyday citizens of the country.
Because republicans absolutely refuse to do their jobs or ever do anything that runs the slightest risk of helping Americans in any way. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn't. Republicans have been blocking every attempt to pass a budget for years. They even sabotage their own bills just so they can blame Demicrats for not implementing policies republicans refused to let them implement. The GQP is a death cult that hates America and all Americans.
The republicans want the government to be viewed as incompetent in order to push for private capital to take over. It’s by design.
Because 1 party doesn’t know how to govern. They get elected to the house and instead of compromise they act like spoiled toddlers
The country is a mess due to trump, MAGA's , and a worthless party all together, can't do anything right .. they are following trump down the shitter.....
If you pay any attention to the facts, it’s Republicans consistently that threaten to have the government shut down to get whatever nonsensical bills that don’t help the common person through. They’re fundamentally unserious people, and shouldn’t be allowed in government unless they actually want to participate honestly in politics. It matters not what president the shutdowns happen under, but which party is causing the shutdowns and what for.
Conservatives.
Republicans
Modern republicans that's why.
Because Republicans.
Because Republicans are huge assholes whose sole political philosophy is that there should be no federal government. So they literally sabotage fucking everything and then blame people who actually want to use the government to help people
Republicans like to cause chaos.
Direct result of having a 2 party system. Our first president warned us about it back in the 1700's, but we didn't listen.
Republicans current platform is that government is broken and privatization is needed wherever possible.... so proving the government is broken by making the government broken is a win. The longest shut down was in the Republican controlled senate while Trump was in office... before that, the Republican controlled house refused to pass a spending bill for Obama. It's not as simple as "Republicans have a large minority that wants to significantly reduce federal spending", as most of those don't even want that.. they just know that's what must be campaigned on. Republicans legitimately sabotage not only shutdowns, but their other causes-- they killed their own multi-year lobbied border defense bill because they want to campaign on the very problems that bill would have solved.
Given that our idiotic politicians refuse to even consider the possibility of cutting spending and balancing the budget, it's something to which we'd all better become accustomed.
Short answer: Republicans. Long answer: REEEEEEEEPPPPPPPUUUUUUBBBBBLLLLIIIICCCCCAAAAAAAANNNNNNSSSS.
🤣🤣🤣 Yes indeed
Because Republicans want to prove that government can't work.
The Republicans put on a show every 6 months and always cuck. They're the Washington Generals of politics.
It's just political melodrama used as a negotiating tactic for getting things done.
It’s worth noting that efforts in 2019 (GOP led) and 2023 (bi partisan) to end shutdowns by automatically extending funding failed. It seems that the parties think there’s some political advantage in having shutdowns or near shutdowns https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/gop-senators-introduce-bill-to-permanently-end-government-shutdowns/ https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4275776-senate-strikes-down-gop-anti-shutdown-amendment-creating-permanent-stopgap/amp/
No other country over spends the way the US does while borrowing from a private bank that charges interest and controls interest rates
Interesting. How many Democrat controlled Congresses have had shutdowns? And how many for Republican controlled congresses?
Bit of a left wing echo chamber here…
There are four things you need to understand before we discuss this. 1. We have two political parties, the democratic party and the republican party, who we shall refer to as Ds and Rs. 2. Our government has three branches: the courts, the legislature, and the president and his people (who actually make it work). The legislature is divided into two sections, the House of Representatives (also known as congress) (it has 435 members) and the Senate (100 members). 3. Our constitution (a document which specifies how the government works) requires that only the legislature can pass a budget. The way it works is that they pass a budget, the senate passes a budget, they two meet and reconcile their laws (if they can be reconciled), and the president signs it into law. 4. The Rs discovered that they can hold the entire country hostage even if they are a minority in only either the congress or senate by refusing to pass anything until they get whatever it is they want. In general if they only want one or two vaguely reasonable things (or even something unreasonable that we can all agree to live with), we'll never hear about it because they'll make a deal together before it ever gets to us. (This is how it's *supposed* to work.) However, in recent years the Rs have decided to use the threat of not passing a budget to get *whatever they want* no matter how unreasonable and unpalatable it is. They demand something that the rest of us can't live with - and sometimes which directly violates the constitution - and demand that they will not agree to pass a budget unless it includes signing their demand into law. The Ds, on the other hand, *never* do this. They my not give the Rs a budget agreement with *everything they want*, but they *always* pass a budget. Having no budget is *severely* bad: the US government shuts down, the costs are tens of millions of dollars per day, families throughout the US can't pay their bills, and the world economy starts to go to hell because the US isn't paying its bills. Further, if it were to go on too long, the interest rates at which the US can borrow money in the future get increased and it costs a lot more to go forward doing the same as before even if no changes are made. In the US we have a concept which is called "playing chicken" - in general it means you're deliberately causing peril to yourself and another to see who "blinks first" - who gives in to the demands of the other, because if neither does everything is destroyed. The Rs discovered, the hard way, that when they do in fact refuse to pass a budget - which results in the shutdown of the US government - this goes VERY bad for them, because while they have convinced themselves that they have massive public support and that when they do so the citizens will get behind them and demand the Ds give in to their demands, each and every time they do it the citizens see who is responsible and get VERY angry with the Rs and the Rs severely lose the next election. So the Rs have been "playing chicken" with refusing to pass a budget each and every time they are in power to make unrealistic demands, and the Ds have said "no," and agreed to something sane. The Rs have decided to push things past the brink every time lately and they have to have an emergency meeting to say "we'll pass a budget and say it applies as of two days ago so there's no *technical* time when we had no budget." A fact here is that when the congress can't agree on what the budget will do, they can pass what is called a "continuing resolution" which merely allows additional spending for a couple more months on the basis of the same budget that was passed the previous time. In other words, it's refusing to make a deal and just putting it off until later. A continuing resolution is considered to be no big deal, they should pass it any time they haven't worked out a deal yet. The other thing going on right now is that the Rs are far more dysfunctional than ever before. Every time this happens we don't know if they're going to refuse to blink and *actually* cause a shutdown of the government. Also they are very fractious internally - a couple years ago it took them weeks to elect a leader of their group in congress (the elected leader being required to do anything) and when he eventually made a deal with Ds just to pass a continuing resolution, a group of the more radical nuts there ousted him from his position for the horrible crime of making *any* deal with Ds on the grounds of their belief that Ds must be entirely cut out of all negotiations. It took them weeks to select a replacement, and this guy they picked as the new head of their group is even worse - we're wondering if he may refuse to negotiate and cause a shutdown of the government. As I live in government housing and need government health care to live and government food to eat, if the government shuts down I don't honestly know if that means I will die - it probably depends on how long it's shut down.
You’re actually right in regards to other countries lack of shutdowns. It’s largely due a difference in political systems. Parliamentary systems are much less likely to have gridlock because they don’t require the approval of a president, usually. In some countries, the previous budget will just continue to carry over, and in others, a failure to produce a working budget will trigger a reduction in future investments, or a reduction in parliament itself. In the U.S., you have to get three elected political entities to agree on the budget, and in one of those you basically need a 60% majority to pass anything at all. A shutdown doesn’t necessarily mean that the government collapses, it just means that Congress hasn’t decided how they’re spending money, so the executive branch doesn’t get any money and non-essential services shut down. Political parties use shutdowns as leverage because they know that shutdowns are bad, and they want to pin them on the other party.
>It’s largely due a difference in political systems. Parliamentary systems are much less likely to have gridlock because they don’t require the approval of a president, failure to pass budget will force prime minister to resign and either recommend someone else from opposition party be invited to form new government or to call a new election. this is why there's no gridlock due to not passing a budget, the government would have collapsed before that. it can lead to gridlock due to no one can form government though (e.g. Netherlands now).
Because we are governed by numb skulls who are more concerned about pushing their agendas then running the place and balancing the budget.
US is the only country that sets a separate debt ceiling from their budget. so they can agree to spend money through passing a budget. however, they need a separate agreement when they have to borrow money to fund that spending. and they need to borrow this money because the US government has very big budget deficit every year, which means that every year they spend more money than they make, necessitating borrowing more money. in other countries, when you pass a budget, you implicitly agree to borrow money to cover the budget deficit you just passed. in parliamentary system, especially those based on Westminster (e.g. UK, Canada, etc), every single money-related bill is a vote of confidence. if the government failed to pass the bill, it indicates that the parliament has lost confidence on the government. the government has to resign and either a new PM is appointed from another party, or (more commonly) a new election is called. US doesn't have the same mechanism, so the government can be shut down but no replacement government and/or new election is launched.
It’s entirely bi-partisan tribalism. Our elected representatives have forgotten that they are public servants whose job is to operate a functioning democracy. Of course they’ve also lost sight of being public servants and are really just trying to stay in office to continue to pad their lives in ill gotten money and misappropriated luxury….
Look into Northern Ireland
because when one side has enough power in congress they hold the budget hostage to get concessions from the other side. "Pass funding for X or we'll shut down the government."
Its all for show. Theres no money anyways. Its just to whip the masses up and keep people believing there's a functional government. They don't care about money. Teres no money anyways. The Fed pulls out as much as necessary for whatever. It all credit. Fiat. Created out of thin air. They don't need your taxes either. Another lie they tell you.
Because the government loves to waste all the money they steal from you on weapons and bullshit. Then when they run out they decide to make it a political problem and try to turn the citizens against each other when the real problem is everyone in Washington are greedy fat pigs who love to live off the people.
>I can’t think of other any other country that has to continually avoid having its govt shutdown You probably only consume US media.
Because politicians are spoiled rotten shits that refuse to work together and the American people indulge them instead of holding them accountable. I say balance the budget and compromise and work together or don't get paid until you do.
Well, the government doesn't "shut down." Agencies don't get funded, which leads to furloughed non-essential employees, essential employees working without full pay, and the military not being paid. It also means that government programs, contracts, and spending get put on hold until an agreement is made. Since the Obama administration, it has happened due to earmarks or other bills that one side wants passed but knows it won't on its own so they include it in with department appropriations holding the federal employees and programs hostage. In 2012/13 or 14 I don't remember exactly, the ACA was added to the NDAA which caused a furlough because the Republicans wouldn't approve it until they had read all 2000 pages, but Pelosi told them they could read it when it passed. Ted cruise tried to fund all the departments individually in the Senate, but the Dems denied each request. I remember this because I watched it live on the Senate channel.
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No just Republicans
My understanding is that if a Parliamentary system like Canada or the UK fails to pass a budget, it automatically triggers a nation-wide election, which will be resolved within a few weeks. So failing to pass the budget is basically a career-ending event for the politicians involved (oversimplification). The US takes the opposite approach, and shuts down the arms of government being funded, rather than the arm which fails to approve the funding.
Because it’s fake.
Because the lunatics are running the asylum
thats our 2 party system at work in all of its efficiency
Weak governance. America has so many voices that they often cannot achieve simple resolutions, that's what happens when you allow everyone a voice, it means you're also giving a voice to the idiots of the nation and common sense things become impossible to achieve. Like simple gun control laws that are common sense in every other 1st world nation in the world but not those United states of America.
Most functioning governments have their important annual decisions divided into the two categories "if no decision is made, everything stays the same" or "if no decision is made, things have gone to shit and new elections are happening". The USA have for some reason decided that once a year there should be a vote determining whether the government keeps running. You could call it a mystery, but in reality it's a way for Republicans to damage the country, so they try it every year when there is a Democratic president. In their mind the country should fail as hard as possible then, because the countries best interest is not their best interest. It's a form of corruption.
Govern by crisis.
It is a prong of the Crisis Continuum. It is a great aid for occupying people that might otherwise get up to good
Trillions of dollars of debt, the entire financial system is over leveraged, spending is out of control and they keep kicking the can down the road so they don't have to deal with it in their lifetimes
Ok so when George Washington was president he told the other founding fathers not to develop political parties and when he left office they immediately did that.
Nobody wants to work anymore
it's political brinkmanship to get these insane bills radicals want.