WASHINGTON (AP) — The government shutdown, already the second-longest in history with no end in sight, is quickly becoming a way for President Donald Trump to exert up-to-date power over the government.
That wasn’t always the case. In fact, it all started with an attempt to tighten Washington’s compliance with federal laws.
The state-of-the-art phenomenon of U.S. government shutdowns began in 1980 with a series of legal opinions from Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who served under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Citing the Antideficiency Act of 1870, Civiletti argued that the law was “clear and unequivocal” in preventing the government from spending money once Congress’s powers expire.
In this shutdown, however, the Republican president used the funding gap to punish Democrats, attempted to lay off thousands of federal workers, and took advantage of the vacuum left by Congress to align the federal budget with his priorities.
“I can’t believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump wrote on his social media platform at the start of the shutdown.
The Democrats have only undermined their positions.
All of this makes this dispute even more arduous to resolve and may completely redefine the way Washington deals with funding shortfalls.
Why are there shutdowns in the US government at all?
In the years after Watergate, Civiletti’s tenure at the Justice Department was marked by an effort to restore public trust in Washington, sometimes through a strict interpretation of federal law.
When a conflict between Congress and the Federal Trade Commission led to a delay in funding legislation for the agency, Civiletti issued his opinion and later followed up with another opinion that allowed the government to provide necessary services.
Little did he know that this would lay the foundation for some of the most decisive political battles of the future.
“I never imagined that these closures would last so long and be used as a political ploy,” Civiletti, who died in 2022, told The Washington Post six years ago.
How shutdowns developed
There were no extended government shutdowns for the next 15 years. In 1994, Republicans under House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia took back Congress and promised to reform Washington. Her most dramatic confrontation with Democratic President Bill Clinton was over the government shutdown.
Historians largely agree that the shutdowns didn’t work, and Clinton won re-election in part by showing he was standing up to Gingrich.
“Gingrich-era Republicans do win some limited policy victories, but for them overall it’s really kind of a failure,” said Mike Davis, an associate professor of history at Lees-McRae College.
Another significant shutdown occurred in 2013 when Tea Party Republicans dueled with Democratic President Barack Obama. But it wasn’t until Trump’s first term that Democrats adopted the tactic of prolonged government shutdowns.
How is this shutdown different?
During previous funding shortfalls, presidential administrations applied closure rules equally to affected agencies.
“A shutdown should shut down the same things under Reagan that they did under Clinton,” said Charles Tiefer, former acting general counsel of the House of Representatives and professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He said the Trump administration in this shutdown used “a type of permissive presidential appropriation power that is inconsistent with the entire system, the original Constitution and the Antideficiency Act.”
The administration has given the fight over funding a distinctly political edge, with agencies updating their websites to include statements blaming Democrats for the shutdown. The Defense Department has used research and development funds to pay dynamic military personnel. Trump has sought to initiate layoffs for more than 4,000 federal workers, most of whom work in areas seen as Democratic priorities.
During a White House lunch with Republican senators this week, Trump introduced his budget director, Russ Vought, as “Darth Vader” and bragged that he was “degrading Democrats’ priorities and they’ll never get them back.”
Democrats were only emboldened by this strategy and repeatedly voted against a Republican-backed bill to reopen the government. They argue that because the GOP holds power in Washington, voters will ultimately blame Republicans for the pain of the shutdown.
Democrats are confident they have made a successful policy call on health insurance plans offered under the Affordable Care Act, but there is an undercurrent that they are also fighting to stop Trump’s expansion of power as president.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., acknowledged that his state has more to lose than perhaps any other because of the vast number of federal workers and the activities based there. But he argued that his voters were tired of Trump’s “non-stop punitive parade,” which included layoffs, cutting money for economic development projects, pressure campaigns against universities and the firing of the U.S. attorney for Virginia.
“It kind of stiffens people’s spines,” Kaine said.
Democratic resolve will be tested next week. Federal employees, including lawmakers’ own staff, will now have to go almost an entire month without full paychecks. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps about one in eight Americans with grocery shopping, faces a potential funding cliff on Nov. 1. Air travel delays only threaten to get worse due to the lack of air traffic controllers.
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he hopes his colleagues begin negotiations quickly to end the impasse.
He said he was one of the few members of the Democratic caucus who voted to end the shutdown because “it empowers the president beyond what he could otherwise do, and it hurts the country.”
