WASHINGTON (AP) — The government shutdown, already the second-longest in history with no end in sight, is quickly becoming President Donald Trump’s way of re-running the government.
It wasn’t always like that. In fact, it all started with an attempt to enforce Washington’s federal law.
The modern phenomenon of US government shutdowns began in 1980 when Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who served under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, issued a series of legal opinions. Civiletti became involved in the 1870s. anti-deficit law, saying the law was “clear and unambiguous” in limiting the government from spending money after congressional powers expire.
But during that shutdown, the Republican president used the funding deadline to punish Democrats, tried to lay off thousands of federal workers and used the vacuum left by Congress to reshape the federal budget to suit his priorities.
“I can’t believe the radical left Democrats have given me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump posted on social media at the start of the shutdown.
Democrats only deepened their positions.
All of this complicates this fight and may redefine how Washington will speak about defunding in general.
Why is the US government even shutting down?
After Watergate, Civiletti’s tenure at the Justice Department was defined by his efforts to restore public trust in Washington, sometimes through strict interpretations of federal law.
When a conflict between Congress and the Federal Trade Commission delayed funding legislation for the agency, Civiletti issued his opinion, later followed by another opinion allowing the government to provide essential services.
Little did he know that this would set the stage for some of the most important political battles to come.
“I never imagined these shutdowns would last this long and be used as a political gambit,” he told The Washington Post six years ago in 2022. deceased Civiletti.
How shutdowns evolved
There were no prolonged government shutdowns for the next 15 years. in 1994 Republicans took over Congress led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and promised to remake Washington. Their most dramatic disagreement with Democratic President Bill Clinton was over the government shutdown.
Historians generally agree that the shutdowns did not work, and that Clinton was able to win reelection in part by showing that he stood up to Gingrich.
“Republicans do get some limited policy victories in the Gingrich era, but overall it’s really a failure for them,” said Mike Davis, associate professor of history at Lees-McRae College.
in 2013 another significant shutdown occurred when tea party republicans clashed with democrat president barack obama. But it wasn’t until Trump’s first term that Democrats adopted the tactic of a prolonged government shutdown.
What makes this shutdown different?
During the previous funding deadline, presidential administrations uniformly applied the rules governing the shutdown to affected agencies.
“The shutdown should have shut down the same things under Reagan as under Clinton,” said Charles Tiefer, a former House solicitor general and professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law. In this shutdown, he said, the Trump administration used “a certain amount of discretionary presidential appropriation power that goes against the whole system, the original Constitution and the Anti-Deficiency Act.”
The administration brought a distinct political edge to the funding fight, with agencies updating their websites to include statements blaming Democrats for the shutdown. The Department of Defense used research and development funds to pay active duty members. Trump has tried to initiate layoffs of more than 4,000 federal employees who work mostly in areas considered Democratic priorities.
At a White House lunch with GOP senators this week, Trump introduced his budget director, Russ Vought, as “Darth Vader” and boasted that he was “undermining the Democrats’ priorities and they will never bring them back.”
This strategy only strengthened the Democrats, who repeatedly voted against the Republican-backed bill to open the government. They argue that voters will ultimately hold Republicans accountable for the pain of the shutdown because the GOP holds power in Washington.
Democrats are confident they’ve picked a winning policy claim for health care plans offered under the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, but there’s an undercurrent they’re also fighting to stop the Trump presidency’s expansion of power.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., acknowledged that his state has more to lose than perhaps any other because of the large number of federal workers and activities located there. But he argued that his constituents were fed up with Trump’s “non-stop parade of punishments,” which included layoffs, defunding of economic development projects, pressure campaigns against universities and the firing of Virginia’s U.S. attorney.
“It kind of sends a chill down people’s spines,” Kaine said.
Democratic resolve will be tested next week. Federal workers, including lawmakers’ own staff, have now gone nearly a month without full pay. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries, ended Nov. 1. faces a potential funding bottleneck. The shortage of air traffic controllers can only increase air travel delays.
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he hopes his colleagues will begin negotiating soon to break the impasse.
He said he was one of the few Democrats in the caucus who voted to end the shutdown because “it gives the president more power than he could do otherwise and it hurts the country.”