Congress agrees on a budget and the President signs it. Or… not. This is what happens when we don’t have a full and final budget or a continuing resolution. This is what happens when the government shuts down and how our idea of a shutdown has changed over time. Our guest this time around is Charles Tiefer, Professor of Law at Baltimore School of Law.
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Hannah McCarthy:
Nick?
Nick Capodice:
Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy:
I think that I have done a pretty good job of not referencing the West Wing on this show. I think I've shown a lot of restraint.
Nick Capodice:
I think that's fair.
Hannah McCarthy:
For someone who works on a show that's largely about government and still cries about a quarter of the time when I watch the West Wing. I will admit I occasionally bring up the Bartlet for America napkin, but that's it, right?
Nick Capodice:
You do bring that up, but in your defense, it's a pretty cinematic moment.
Hannah McCarthy:
It is.
Hannah McCarthy:
But today I'm I'm doing it. I'm breaking. I'm going to reference the West Wing quite a bit. Also, by the way, for anyone who has never heard of or never seen the West Wing, it is a TV show from the 90s and the early aughts about a fictional president, Jeb Bartlet, and his administration, and it has been roundly praised for being relatively true to the actual goings on of the West Wing. If pretty idealistic and sentimental, which is why I cry all the time. And the government of Myanmar reportedly used the West Wing to study how democracy works,
Nick Capodice:
Although I do know that Gerald Ford's daughter couldn't watch it, apparently because they got the layout wrong and the frequent walking talks they turn left when it's actually a right turn and they turn right when it's actually a left turn.
Hannah McCarthy:
Whatever. Nevertheless, I recently rewatched a certain episode and nick my how the world has changed.
West Wing, Season 5, Episode 8: Shutdown:
And I said No. Let's be clear, sir. You will be held responsible for shutting down the federal government, then shut it down.
Nick Capodice:
Oh, it's so dramatic.
Hannah McCarthy:
It is so dramatic. But Nick? Government shutdowns actually used to mean something. The name of that episode, by the way, for anyone who's looking for it, is just shut down. I mean, can you even imagine at this stage a United States in which a shutdown warrants this kind of music?
Nick Capodice:
I feel like nowadays the announcement of a government shutdown would elicit nothing more than like a trombone going wah-wah-wahhhh.
Hannah McCarthy:
I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice:
I'm Nick Capodice.
And this is Civics 101, and today we are talking about the grind to a halt disaster that has taken on new meaning in recent years. The government shutdown.
Archival:
Top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer tonight. The possible shutdown less of a concern now than to the lawmakers racing to prevent a government shutdown.
Archival:
Both chambers, so we told the president we needed the government open. He resisted. In fact, he said he'd keep the government closed.
Archival:
A new poll shows more Americans blame the president and his party for this historic.
Archival:
Fortunately, Congress has not fulfilled its responsibility. It's failed to pass a budget, and as a result, much of our government must now shut down until Congress funds it again.
Nick Capodice:
I feel like government shutdowns are pretty commonplace nowadays, but I do want to point out, I don't remember hearing about them when I was a kid.
Hannah McCarthy:
OK.
Hannah McCarthy:
Yes, the thing is the government shutdowns were certainly happening as you were growing up. The public just was not paying as much attention to them.
Nick Capodice:
Why wouldn't you pay attention to the government itself shutting down?
Hannah McCarthy:
Well before we talk about what a government shutdown used to be? Let's quickly establish what it actually is.
Charles Tiefer:
A shutdown is like a disease in the budgetary process.
Hannah McCarthy:
This is Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore. He spoke with the original host of Civics 101 Virginia Prescott back in 2017.
Nick Capodice:
Right. So before we stumbled into our longest shutdown ever,
Hannah McCarthy:
Correct just before the twenty eighteen shutdown. This is when we were on the verge of it and everyone was like, what does a shutdown mean again?
Charles Tiefer:
Annual spending bills are supposed to regularly follow one after the other. So as one expires, the one for the spending for the next year takes over. But if you have a giant glitch in the spending process, the one for a prior fiscal year expires and there's no new one in place. And that means the government finds it has an empty wallet without any money in it they can spend.
Nick Capodice:
In other words, a government shutdown is when the government fails to fund itself
Hannah McCarthy:
And to understand government shutdowns. Today, it helps to know where this relatively recent phenomenon came from.
Nick Capodice:
We haven't always had them.
Hannah McCarthy:
No, our government did not have its first shutdown until nineteen seventy six.
Nick Capodice:
So for the first two hundred years of our government's existence, we didn't have a single shutdown.
Hannah McCarthy:
Correct.
Hannah McCarthy:
So what on earth went wrong?
Hannah McCarthy:
All right. Before the mid 70s, the president had way more control over the budgeting process than Richard Nixon came along and took it to the next level. He refused to spend congressionally appropriated funds.
Archival:
The time has come for a new economic policy for the United States. Its targets are unemployment, inflation and international speculation. And this is how we are going to attack those targets.
Hannah McCarthy:
Congress got mad and passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to gain more control, as is in the name. Nineteen seventy six came along and President Gerald Ford vetoed an appropriations bill because he felt trapped by a Democratic Congress. He wanted more control and the government shut down for 10 days.
Nick Capodice:
Did everyone freak out?
Hannah McCarthy:
Not really. Everyone assumed Congress would just figure it out, and they did. Also because we'd never had a shutdown before the government just went on spending money that it hadn't appropriated. The attorney general later decided during the Reagan administration that spending money you didn't have was illegal.
Nick Capodice:
All right. But I grew up in the Reagan administration, and I still don't remember shutdowns.
Hannah McCarthy:
Reagan had eight government shutdowns during his administration.
Nick Capodice:
Eight shutdowns.
Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, the most of any president ever.
Nick Capodice:
Wait, we hear about Reagan's legacy all the time. Why doesn't anybody mention that he had eight shutdowns?
Hannah McCarthy:
All right. So here is the big shift that changed government shutdowns forever. Before the 1990s, government shutdowns were typically about line item quibbles. Disputes over very specific funding decisions. For example, we shut down under Carter for a full 18 days when he vetoed an appropriations bill that funded an expensive nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
President Carter:
We are going to hold down government spending, reduce the budget deficit and eliminate government waste.
Nick Capodice:
So what changed in the nineties?
Charles Tiefer:
Oh, that was a titanic clash. In 1995, a new Republican House Republican Senate had been elected in the 1994 election. So you had the first Republican Congress in ages and ages and ages had been decades since there had been a Republican House. This was led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he thought that this would batter down the doors of the White House and that he would make them sign bills about key spending programs, including perhaps cuts in entitlements like Medicare Medicaid.
Newt Gingrich:
He talked about letting Medicare wither on the vine. The fact is, there is a forty five percent increase in general Medicare spending that is twice the inflation rate over the next seven years.
Nick Capodice:
Ok, I do remember it being a huge deal that Republicans had control of Congress for the first time in like 40 years,
Charles Tiefer:
And President Clinton, who had lost the Congress in the 1994 election, had been elected with a strong Democratic Congress in the 1992 election and then lost it in the midterm election. He had lay low for a while. He hadn't been fighting. He hadn't been standing up visibly against the Republican Congress, but he stood up on the shutdown and said, You want to shut me down, go ahead and shut me down. I'm here to protect Medicare, Medicaid, the environment and Social Security. And he drew the line in the sand, and that was what the government closed down on that clash at the top level.
Nick Capodice:
This sounds familiar.
Hannah McCarthy:
Doesn't it, though.
West Wing, Season 5, Episode 8: Shutdown:
You will be held responsible for shutting down the federal government, then shut it down.
Hannah McCarthy:
Ok, so this major shutdown happens in the nineties and it lasts 21 days. And this is a big deal, and I don't know why you don't remember it, probably because you were a teenager and had other things on your mind. But the point is the government shuts down for a long time, and this time it is about something big. It's not some small line item, it's about political ideologies of a president
Nick Capodice:
Just like Jeb Bartlet.
Hannah McCarthy:
Just like Jeb Bartlet.
West Wing, Season 5, Episode 8: Shutdown:
We still haven't cut enough spending. I agree. I want you to cut agriculture subsidies and you want me to cut Medicaid again. You know, I'll veto any Medicaid cuts, and I know you won't give me any agriculture cuts. So here we are.
Hannah McCarthy:
And by the way, Republicans in the 90s made a bet that the public would back them in this fight, and they were wrong. It divided and hurt the Republican Party, and everyone was so wounded by this moment that for the next 17 years, we avoided another shutdown.
Nick Capodice:
What year did that episode of the West Wing come out?
Hannah McCarthy:
As two thousand and three.
Nick Capodice:
Ok. So when that episode came out, government shutdown had become a different, scarier political beast and a really big deal that we all worked hard to avoid.
Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, even when we had budget issues which happen all the time, Congress was able to prevent shutdown by passing what's called a continuing resolution. Here's Charles Tiefer again.
Charles Tiefer:
When you have a gap, it's possible for Congress to say we don't have our act together to pass another full length appropriation bill that would be 100 pages or much more, depending on which one it is. We don't have our act to do that, but we could pass a one paragraph statement that you just continue spending for the next 30, 60 or 90 days at the rate from last year. And that's it's like a bandage over the sore and it works. During that period, the government has a wallet. There are many complaints about that situation, but it is not a shutdown,
Nick Capodice:
Which is something that President Biden signed to avoid the first government shutdown threat of his administration. But our longest shutdown, Hannah. Thirty five days under President Trump. That seemed to confirm this new normal, that government shutdowns will be the inevitable result of partisan battles between Congress and the president. And they don't seem to have any lasting political consequences. So what happened?
Hannah McCarthy:
Well, we saw our first government shutdown since Clinton during the Obama administration with this big fight over the Affordable Care Act.
Barack Obama:
About three weeks ago, as the federal government shut down the Affordable Care Act's health insurance marketplaces open for business across the
Nick Capodice:
Country. Another example of a party not getting what they wanted and gambling on a shutdown.
Hannah McCarthy:
And also, I think another example of partisanship of a Congress that does not want to compromise because before the 90s, remember, shutdowns were typically short and represented the time that it took to make a compromise on usually something smaller. And that's just not really the case anymore. So Obama had just the one shutdown, but then Trump had three, although one of them only lasted for nine hours. And now, you know, so for me, when someone at the FDA tells me, as they recently did, that they might not be able to do an interview in a week because the government might be shut down, I'm like, Yup, that sounds about right.
Nick Capodice:
All right. So government shutdown has gone from this sort of temporary hiccup, barring negotiation to a commonplace political tactic,
Hannah McCarthy:
At least in our current political climate. And for us laypeople, US and nongovernment employees who can kind of shrug it a shutdown because it isn't reflected in our paychecks. I feel like we should emphasize that he shutdown does matter to everyone. It does affect your life and we're going to find out how after the break.
Nick Capodice:
I just want to invite any listeners out there who might be interested in trivia and ephemera and deeper dives into our episode topics to subscribe to our newsletter, it's called Extra Credit. It's every two weeks, it's a goof. Next week, I'm going to have some Civics 101 trivia that we asked on air and a photo of our executive producers most hideous new pair of leggings. You can subscribe at civics101podcast.org. All right, let's get back to it. What actually happens when the government shuts down?
Hannah McCarthy:
Great question. Here's Charles Tiefer.
Charles Tiefer:
The government has various guides, legal opinions of the past, practices of the past guidelines and so forth to follow, which say some activities can continue to be funded. Sort of on an emergency basis so that the armed forces aren't left without the ability to to get ammunition. Things that must continue on an emergency basis are able to. But the government splits apart and quite a lot of its activity isn't. Emergency is just a continuing need of the public and that it can't spend on during a shutdown.
Hannah McCarthy:
And for many of us, the problem does start and end at inconvenience.
Charles Tiefer:
Among the examples so most of the IRS shuts down if you have a question and you need to get an answer, you can't get an answer. You can't call up. No one will answer the phone.
Hannah McCarthy:
Now what shuts down during a shutdown all depends on what has or has not been funded at that point. But you're usually going to see the parks services close up shop, meaning bye bye to your trip to Yellowstone. The same goes for Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo. Immigration courts typically close as if the backlog wasn't bad enough. Most of the Department of Agriculture, which monitors farming and forest regulation, shuts down. Nasa even has to power down some of its large scale instruments.
Nick Capodice:
Yeah, I didn't know that. What about stuff like regulation like food and drug inspection? Does that continue?
Charles Tiefer:
Food inspections are considered an emergency service, and they do continue
Hannah McCarthy:
And things like entitlements, meaning Medicare and Social Security, those don't need annual spending bills, so those keep churning. But there are examples of people being disastrously affected by a government shutdown.
Charles Tiefer:
I can tell you what one of the most horrible examples of what happens during a shutdown in the Health and Human Services. They have what they call trials, tryouts, tests for new drugs, new treatments and new people cannot be enrolled in a clinical trial. New patients, desperate new patients cannot be enrolled in clinical trials during a shutdown period. And so you would see saw the last time that there was a shutdown. These frantic parents saying I can't get my son or daughter into a trial. They've got one of these rare types of childhood cancers that there's no good regular treatment for. I can't imagine what insanity is going on, that they're not letting my child get enrolled.
Hannah McCarthy:
And just to be clear, in terms of who is affected by something like that, as of October, twenty twenty one. There were over a hundred thousand clinical trials registered in the United States alone. Halting that much work can have devastating consequences.
Nick Capodice:
So if Health and human services were to shut down during a pandemic, what would happen to all the research, the response and vaccine development?
Hannah McCarthy:
Well, fortunately, that's considered an emergency service. And for example, HHS created a full. What we're going to do with COVID 19 if the government shuts down plan. But keep in mind these emergency workers, these people who still show up and do the job, they are technically working without pay.
Charles Tiefer:
There is no money for them. It used to be the custom that when the shutdown was over, they would pay people retroactively. But there have been threats during recent pre shutdown periods. By some, you might call some anti-government or small government people who who say, Let's we don't want to pay the civil service, let's not pay them. At the end of the day, let's not pay retroactively at the end of the shutdown.
Nick Capodice:
So who gets to make the call in terms of what actually is an emergency service or not?
Charles Tiefer:
Well, that has gotten more organized. Few decades ago, it was pretty random. A supervisor that low levels would make the decisions. But now there's supervision on high from the White House. They keep a pretty elaborate tab to make sure there's some uniformity in what's shut down and what's not shut down so that the different cabinet departments have some kind of similar read.
Hannah McCarthy:
No matter how well a shut down is organized, it is still a shutdown. There is a civic impact. A shutdown affects how we think of our government. The public does not like it.
Charles Tiefer:
Well they all think it shows gridlock in Washington and that Washington is dysfunctional. That's something pretty common that you you see during shutdowns. And they consider it the extreme example that the government can't get its act together. The public doesn't like disorderly things like shutdown, essentially.
Nick Capodice:
Even if it is commonplace, it's the kind of thing we roll our eyes at. But expect shutdowns do endanger faith in our government, which I feel is bad for all of us in the long run.
Hannah McCarthy:
And Nick, just to bring this walk and talk full circle. This is exactly the point that that West Wing episode is trying to make that shut down is trying to make the government shuts down because there was a compromise to keep everything going and then that compromise is retracted. And Jeb Bartlett is like, do your job.
West Wing, Season 5, Episode 8: Shutdown:
We had a deal. I don't care if my approval ratings drop into single digits. I am the president of the United States, and I will leave this government shutdown until we reach an equitable agreement.
Hannah McCarthy:
This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Christina Phillips and Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. If you want more civics, headphones free, you can check out our book on it. It's called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works, and it's a quick, fun guide to these United States. You can find that wherever books are sold. Music in this episode by Xylo-Zico, Wildlight Metre, Daniel Burch and Cycle Hiccups. There is always more to be found, including our many other episodes a submission form to ask us for an episode you want and loads more at civics101podcast.org. And while you're there a reminder that while civics is free to you, it is not free to make. We exist because of your generous contributions to our show. If you're so inclined, you can click the donate button on your way to your favorite civics episode. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
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