If the Congress fails to pass budgetary approval by the end of the fiscal year, a 'funding gap' results. The last budget was passed on April 29, 2009. Budget negotiations can be difficult when the president is not of the party that controls one or both houses of Congress. Since the 1990s, Congress has often failed to pass the twelve to thirteen appropriation bills that set government-wide spending, often passing 'continuing resolutions (CR)' to extend existing spending law at or near current levels, and 'omnibus' bills that combine many appropriations bills into one. The legislation that sets government spending is called appropriations legislation. Some programs are fully or partially funded for multiple years and some are funded every year. Others, like Social Security and Medicare, are partially self-funded but may be subject to administrative shutdowns and failures if the government fails to meet its financial obligations.

Some government functions such as the Federal Reserve System are completely self-funded. The United States Constitution requires government spending be approved in bills passed by the United States Congress. See also: 2014 United States federal budget Īccording to a Washington Post/ ABC News poll conducted several months following the shutdown, 81% of Americans disapproved of the shutdown, 86% felt it had damaged the United States' image in the world, and 53% held Republicans in Congress accountable for the shutdown. Late in the evening of October 16, 2013, Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014, and President Obama signed it shortly after midnight on October 17, ending the government shutdown and suspending the debt limit until February 7, 2014. Some of the law's funds also come from multiple-year and 'no-year' discretionary funds that are not affected by a lack of a continuing resolution. Much of the Affordable Care Act is funded by previously authorized and mandatory spending, rather than discretionary spending, and the presence or lack of a continuing resolution did not affect it. The health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act launched as scheduled on October 1. The Senate declined to pass the bill with measures to delay the Affordable Care Act, and the two legislative houses did not develop a compromise bill by the end of September 30, 2013, causing the federal government to shut down due to a lack of appropriated funds at the start of the new 2014 federal fiscal year.Īlso, on October 1, 2013, many aspects of the Affordable Care Act implementation took effect. The House reinstated the Senate-removed measures, and passed it again in the early morning hours on September 29. The Senate stripped the bill of the measures related to the Affordable Care Act, and passed it in revised form on September 27, 2013. The deadlock centered on the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014, which was passed by the House of Representatives on September 20, 2013. Political fights over this and other issues between the House on one side and President Barack Obama and the Senate on the other led to a budget impasse which threatened massive disruption. The Democratic-led Senate passed several amended continuing resolutions for maintaining funding at then-current sequestration levels with no additional conditions. The Republican-led House of Representatives, encouraged by Ted Cruz and a handful of other Republican senators, and conservative groups such as Heritage Action, offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as 'Obamacare'). history, after the 35-day 2018–2019 shutdown and the 21-day 1995–96 shutdown.Ī 'funding-gap' was created when the two chambers of Congress failed to agree to an appropriations continuing resolution. The 16-day-long shutdown of October 2013 was the third-longest government shutdown in U.S. federal government shutdown was in 1995–96. Only those government services deemed 'excepted' under the Antideficiency Act were continued and only those employees deemed 'excepted' were permitted to report to work. Regular government operations resumed October 17 after an interim appropriations bill was signed into law.ĭuring the shutdown, approximately 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed, and another 1.3 million were required to report to work without known payment dates. From October 1 to October 17, 2013, the United States federal government entered a shutdown and curtailed most routine operations because neither legislation appropriating funds for fiscal year 2014 nor a continuing resolution for the interim authorization of appropriations for fiscal year 2014 was enacted in time.

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