Why: The Senate wanted to loosen restrictions on the use of Medicaid dollars to cover abortions (restrictions known informally as “the Hyde Amendment”), by allowing funding in cases of rape, incest, and when the health of the mother is in danger at the time, only abortions necessary to save the life of the mother were funded. House: Democrats (292-143), Speaker Tip O’Neill Senate: Democrats (59-41), Majority Leader Robert Byrd Shutdown 2: September 30 to October 13, 1977 That alone didn’t cause a funding gap because Democrats rapidly overrode his veto, but it took until October 11 for Congress to pass a continuing resolution funding the rest of the government, whose funding had lapsed amid the HEW/Labor funding fight. Why: Ford vetoed a funding bill for the Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare (which has since been divided into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services). House: Democrats (291-144), Speaker Carl Albert Senate: Democrats (62-38), Majority Leader Mike Mansfield Shutdown 1: September 30 to October 11, 1976 When not otherwise cited, the explanations below come courtesy of this helpful piece by some dude named Dylan Matthews. Here are all 20 funding gaps prior to the current one, and why they happened. It wasn’t until a set of opinions issued by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in 1980 and ’81 that the government started treating “funding gaps”- periods when Congress has failed to allocate funds for the ongoing functions of government - as necessitating the full or partial shutdown of government agencies. The first six of those didn’t actually affect the functioning of government at all. Since then, Congress has failed to authorize funding for the federal government on 21 separate occasions. They first began as the result of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Government shutdowns are familiar to most Americans, but they’re a relatively recent development. In the meantime, some 420,000 federal workers are working without pay another 380,000 are furloughed without pay tax refunds might be delayed and payments for Women and Infant Children (WIC) could soon be cut for lack of funds. ![]() Most recently Democrats offered a spending package that would maintain current funding levels for border security, which Trump rejected out of hand. His $5 billion isn’t enough for a full wall, but would block off 215 additional miles that are currently unfenced (in addition to the 120 miles the administration is currently building with existing funds). The partial shutdown began on December 22, 2018, with President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion to pay for his much-promised full-length border wall with Mexico, and while both parties in Congress had floated $1.6 billion as a compromise, Trump rejected it. ![]() With 22 full days down as of Sunday January 13, and no clear end in sight, the 2018-’19 shutdown has outlasted 1995’s (which ended after 21 days), previously the longest by a wide margin. We are currently in the middle of the longest-running government shutdown in American history.
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