Changes

====More Recent Shutdowns====

Since the presidency of Barack Obama, shutdowns have emerged once again as a phenomenon of US politics. In 2013, Congress, this time divided between a Democratic-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House, came to major disagreements on the 2014 Continuing Appropriations Bill. Before 2013, shutdowns were often avoided, sometimes at the last minute, using short-term continuing appropriation bills or continuing resolutions (CRs), which effectively allowed government to operate using the previous fiscal year's budget levels. These were short-term solutions that often created uncertainty for government employees but were often resolved because both parties saw shutdowns as too politically costly. However, on October 1, 2013, a 16-day shutdown occurred due to many appropriation disagreements, in particular funding and timing of funding for the 2013 Affordable Care Act being a major source of contention. This bitterness over the new health bill and increased pressure from political groups to try to stop appropriation for this and other funding in the government led to a stalemate in Congress that led to the eventual shutdown. One key source of contention was the debt ceiling that can only be lifted by Congress.

For the appropriation of 2019, President Trump and some Republicans sought to have funding included in the appropriation for a protective wall along the US-Mexico border. Continuing resolutions that did not include funding for the wall were refused by Trump with Democrats also refusing to include any funding. The lack of compromise created the longest-lived shutdown. From December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019, the government shutdown affected more than 380,000 through furloughs and 420,000 workers were asked to work without pay. The shutdown mostly came to an end due to increased security and safety concerns due to the record shutdown period affecting the FBI and Transportation Security Administration (TSA), including many unpaid workers calling in sick.<ref>For more recent politics and government shutdowns, see: Kruse, K. M., & Zelizer, J. E. (2019). <i>Fault lines: a history of the United States since 1974 </i>(First edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.</ref>

====Summary====

Shutdowns entered American political discourse, in some ways, perhaps accidentally due to what was, at the time, a relatively minor disagreement about the FTC's role in regulating the economy that led to the Attorney General reinterpreting the 1884 Antideficiency Act to allow for government shutdowns. This decision could be argued has had a great effect on the US government and employees, as it now effectively set a precedent for the politicization of appropriation bills and made shutdowns possible. Whereas before it was not possible to shutdown the government, it became possible for even a minority party in Congress to delay or shutdown the government by demonstrating its disagreement about an issue, sometimes not even directly related to the appropriation in dispute. Shutdowns in 1995-96 had a major impact on US politics by making both parties avoid them for nearly twenty years, but that changed during President Obama's tenure and today's increased partisanship has also led to a more recent record-breaking, at least in time, government shutdown.