At the beginning of the partial shutdown, an estimated , employees were furloughed, a smaller number than usual since large federal employers such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense were already funded. Another , employees reported to work but did not receive pay until the shutdown ended. As the shutdown continued, departments and agencies such as the IRS and State Department recalled an increasing number of employees.
Whereas discretionary spending must be appropriated every year, mandatory spending is authorized either for multi-year periods or permanently. Thus, mandatory spending generally continues during a shutdown. However, some services associated with mandatory programs may be diminished if there is a discretionary component to their funding. For instance, during the shutdowns and the shutdown, Social Security checks continued to go out.
However, staff who handled new enrollments and other services, such as changing addresses or handling requests for new Social Security cards, were initially furloughed in In , certain activities were discontinued, including verifying benefits and providing new and replacement cards, but processing of benefit applications or address changes continued.
During the shutdown, the Department of Agriculture had to rely on a special authority included in the previous CR to allow them to continue to issue SNAP benefits. The hours-long lapse in appropriations in February , though sometimes characterized as a shutdown, did not result in federal employee furloughs.
However, before , the government did not shut down but rather continued normal operations through six funding gaps. Since , 10 funding gaps of three days or fewer have occurred, mostly over a weekend when government operations were only minimally affected.
The first two happened in the winter of when President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress were unable to agree on spending levels and the government shut down twice, for a total of 26 days. The fourth shutdown, starting in December and continuing into January , centered on a dispute over border wall funding and was the longest-lasting shutdown at 35 days.
While estimates vary widely, evidence suggests that shutdowns tend to cost, not save, money for a number of reasons. For one, putting contingency plans in place has a real cost. In addition, many user fees and other charges are not collected during a shutdown, and federal contractors sometimes include premiums in their bids to account for uncertainty in being paid.
While many federal employees are forced to be idle during a shutdown, they have historically received and are now guaranteed back pay, negating much of those potential savings. Shutdowns also carry a cost to the economy. On top of that effect, CBO notes that longer shutdowns negatively affect private-sector investment and hiring decisions as businesses cannot obtain federal permits and certifications, or access federal loans. Theoretically, the House and Senate Appropriations committees are supposed to pass 12 different appropriations bills that are broken up by subject area and based on funding levels allocated in a budget resolution.
To avoid a shutdown, Congress would need to pass all 12 appropriations bills through both chambers and get them signed by the President before October 1. This could be done by enacting each bill individually or by packaging them together through an omnibus or minibus.
On September 21, the House passed a continuing resolution that would extend current funding levels through December 3 and suspend the debt limit until near the end of Senate action is uncertain, however, due to the lack of needed Republican support for raising the debt limit under regular Senate rules as well as specific funding disagreements, including appropriations for the Iron Dome missile defense system in Israel. For more about the status of specific appropriations bills, see Appropriations Watch: FY A continuing resolution temporarily funds the government in the absence of full appropriations bills, often by continuing funding levels from the prior year.
Traditionally, CRs have been used to give lawmakers a short period of time to complete their work on remaining appropriations bills while keeping the government open. CRs sometimes apply to only a few categories of spending, but they can also be used to fund all discretionary functions and can be used for an entire year.
Even when overall funding levels have differed, lawmakers have often simply scaled up all accounts by a percent change in spending rather than making individual decisions on spending accounts.
Congress frequently passes CRs when lawmakers are unable to agree on appropriations before a deadline, and occasionally multiple CRs are necessary to fund the government for an entire fiscal year. Congress also sometimes relies on CRs during presidential transition years. In FY , for example, a series of intense congressional negotiations leading up to the election led to a series of 10 one-day CRs.
The most recent one, which started on Dec. During that period, The Conversation ran a series of articles that helped explain what was at stake, who suffers and why. Below are some insights gleaned by experts from previous government shutdowns that may give a clue as to what the U.
The federal workforce currently comprises around 2. In the shutdown of , some , workers were affected by the government shutdown. Of those, around , were furloughed, meaning they could not work or get paid, while the rest worked without pay for the duration of the shutdown.
She explained that the vast majority of federal employees work and live outside of Washington, D. The work they perform ranges from protecting waterways and ensuring food safety to investigating crime. Read more: Who are the federal workers affected by the shutdown? One short-term consequence of not paying so many people is that it provides a short-term brake on consumer spending, according to Scott Baker, a professor of finance at Northwestern University.
For households with a member furloughed in the shutdown, the drop in consumer spending almost doubled. This is a problem not just for federal employees and their families. Having failed in their bid to defund Obamacare, Republicans leaders eventually worked with their Democratic counterparts on a plan to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. Obama said at the time. For more, read about the latest news on the shutdown , or explore this calendar of how the effects of the government shutdown are piling up.
Please upgrade your browser. See next articles. The length of completed shutdowns is the number of full days before the day that funding was approved. Benjamin R. Civiletti taking the oath of office as United States attorney general in Associated Press.
President Ronald Reagan in November United Press International. Left: Speaker of the House John A. Boehner before voting on Oct.
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