On October 1, with Congress unable to reach an agreement on the appropriation bills that fund various government agencies, the United States government shutdown for the first time since 1995.  Every year, Congress is supposed to agree on 12 appropriation bills that fund federal agencies.  Recently, however, instead of passing appropriation bills, Congress has relied on “continuing resolutions”–stopgap measures that simply extend current federal spending levels–as it cannot agree on new bills.  Indeed, Congress has not passed a single appropriation since 2000.  The last continuing resolution expired on September 30 and, with no agreement in sight, the federal government was forced to shut down all non-essential services.  Any government employee not directly involved in anything related to national security, public safety, or necessary to running programs written into permanent law will have to go home (members of Congress will continue getting paid during the shutdown, as their salaries are written into permanent law).  Roughly 800,000 federal workers fall into the non-essential category.

Government shutdowns of this sort could be called uniquely American.  In most other democracies, either the executive branch has the ability to keep the government running without a budget or, in a parliamentary system where the executive and legislative branches are interconnected, budgetary measures do not get bogged down in the type of legislative fighting currently paralyzing Congress (in the unlikely instance that a parliamentary legislature refuses to pass a budget, it would trigger a failure of government and result in a new election, with mechanisms similar to a continuing resolution ensuring the bills get paid until a new government is put in place).  In the United States, where every federal department, agency, or program must have Congressional authorization to spend a specific amount of money and Congressional approval for the purpose of that spending (hence the term “appropriation bill” whereby money is appropriated from a department’s budget for a specific purpose) failure to reach an agreement on appropriations mean all non-essential government functions must cease.  The authority of the executive branch to bypass Congress is limited by both the Constitution, which grants Congress sole authority to appropriate money, and the Antideficiency Act, which prevents expenditures beyond the amount available in appropriation funds.

The last government shutdown (preceded by 16 previous, more minor, shutdowns) started at the end of 1995 and continued into January 1996.  It was sparked by disagreements over spending on, among other things, Medicare, education, and public health programs.  President Clinton vetoed the spending bill sent to him by the Republican-controlled Congress, resulting in a 28 day shutdown.  The current crisis, however, is not driven so much by differences on spending, but on policy.  Congressional Republicans have demanded a delay in the health-care law and have attempted to strip funding for it.  The Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have both refused to pass a bill that would negatively affect the Affordable Care Act.  In the meantime, the health exchanges have gone live and thousands of government employees have been sent home without pay.

While even a one week shutdown could cost the economy $10 billion dollars, any agreement seems like a distant possibility.  A recent Republican strategy to pass mini-continuing resolutions funding popular programs appears to have failed and President Obama continues to state that he will not consider the proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act.  With no signs of a forthcoming resolution, only one thing is certain: this budget fight will be expensive.