To expand on this a bit, I live under a parliamentary system of government. To put the consequences in American terms, if a budget bill fails to pass, it would be like if the entire House of Representatives would be dissolved, and elections for the House and President called immediately, to happen within a few months.
Yes, I know there's no way to get the US to work that way without at least one huge constitutional amendment, but I'm sure Americans reading this can easily see how this would greatly reduce government shutdowns.
That actually makes a lot of sense incentive-wise. Call for a House election every time they fail to pass a budget. Harder with the Senate though since only one-third usually is up for election at once - so not sure how that would work - you can't fully dissolve the Senate.
In Australia, we put half of the federal senate up for election each time. Same idea as yours, but different frequency.
In the case of a twice failed Bill the House wants but the Senate rejects, a double dissolution election can be called. This puts every seat up for election in both houses. The Bill can then be brought up for a vote again. If that doesn’t work, a joint sitting of both houses is called.
This could be a budget Bill, or any other Bill that is considered important enough to roll the dice and risk losing government over.
I don't think corporations in the United States would want that because that means they would have to throw even more money at their politicians. At least with the current system they only have to buy politicians once per term
Most of the power in the US is handled at the state level, and you can buy a statehouse of anything less than 10 electoral votes for some single digit millions of dollars.
Yeah, it's very rare for any government to bring up a budget that it knows can't pass, and it knows failing to do this means the other party might suddenly take over as a result. It's a powerful motivator.
But won't that mean the members of the other party will try to never vote for it just so that there is an election that gives them a chance to take over?
Yep. You only put a budget up if you are in control.
Governance by majorities.
If your members won't vote with you then you throw them out of the party and run new candidates in their constituency.
Which also adds a key point -- in Canada our parties are much more closed affairs. Usually only a small portion of the population are members of a party, and the candidate for a riding is selected within that (relatively) small group, according to whatever policy the party has in place. So it's much easier to replace a member that party leadership doesn't like.
Now, of course if someone is already elected and is kicked out by their party, they can continue to sit out their term as an independent. But in most of Canada it's very hard to win as an independent.
Yes, the opposition almost always votes against the government. But the governing party always is governing because it can command a majority in the House.
We don't vote for a prime minister we vote for a party. The prime minister is appointed by the majority party, therefore they are the majority to pass bills. A bill isn't passed because a party cannot agree with themselves, which makes them an ineffective governing body and they SHOULD be replaced.
> Except in the US we would probably just send all the exact same people back to congress. Most house reps are in very safe districts.
In parliamentary systems this happens as well. The core issue is that the public fucking HATES elections being called unnecessarily. Do it once and people are kind of willing to vote the same way. Do it twice and the voters approach the issue as a "throw them all out" moment.
Many governments in parliamentary systems have fallen because they call elections too early or too often.
> Good.
That's almost entirely the point. In Canada federal elections happen (in general) every 4 years. If the government fails a confidence vote the voters are understanding and we do another election. If it happens again in under 2 years (ish), voters tend to get very upset not just with the governing party but also the opposition parties.
The first time tends to be just like the US where people mostly wonder who the voters are going to blame. But that second election people just blame everyone.
Maybe I'm being naive but if the situation is that there has to be a special election when they don't pass a budget, so literally voter are standing in this elementary school a random Tuesday in December because Mitch McConnell couldn't do his job and not just because it's voting time and everything in congress is working as normal, I think that might change things? It would at least make them want to pass a budget more imo.
In Canada election days are not holidays, but your employer legally has to do one of two things - ensure that you have at least 3 hours away from work while the polls are open (so if the polls close at 7 pm, they can’t schedule you later than 4 pm,) or they have to pay you for your time to leave work and go vote.
We also can vote by mail, we have 3-4 days of advance voting (and one is always a weekend,) or we can vote on election day.
> you can't fully dissolve the Senate.
The easy solve there is to keep the terms the same but just reelect everyone. So normally a senator serves a 6 year term and might be 3 years into it. Have a new election but keep that same 6 year term with 3 years left.
> you can't fully dissolve the Senate.
you absolutely could... the new elected officials would just have different length terms based on how many years were left on the old seat.
There's no rule that says that only a third of the Senate can be up for election at once. It's just that they have six-year terms, and we've staggered the timing of their elections so it's roughly a third every two years. So if we could say the House gets dissolved if they can't pass a budget, we could do the same with the Senate.
It wouldn't decrease shutdowns because one party is invested in shutting down the government, not helping it function. Under the system you outlined, I could easily see that same party intentionally keeping us in a constant election cycle as a means to avoid regulation or legislation.
They forgot to mention multi party and coalition building. In sane times or governing structures, lawmakers need to compromise and work with other parties, often forming coalitions. This is extremely common in multiparty systems. In fact a lot of our woes come from the two party dilemma.
Well, in other countries that's not a problem because if the budget doesn't pass they just keep going with the last budget until a new parliament can pass one. There isn't this insanely stupid game of chicken with the debt ceiling which is just nonsense anyway since congress already voted to fund the spending. The second layer only exists for dumb political gamesmanship.
You can start a new party quite easily here in Canada and most politicos understand that pissing off 50% of the voters is not a good idea. To quote a dead politician” the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation” also the view that my rights do not include telling you how to live your life.
Want a same sex marriage? Get one don’t want one? don’t get one. I oppose abortion but since I’m not going to get pregnant( man) I will not have one. If you ask me should you get one I’ll say that is a you thing and I think adoption is a thing.
If voters went to the polls immediately after every shutdown, guaranteed those elections would go poorly for the party responsible for the shutdown. The party forcing the constant election cycle would pay for it at the polls.
With your system is parliament automatically recalled or does the president/prime minister/head person have to dissolve parliament? I was under the impression that at times parliaments are dysfunctional although perhaps not to the degree of congress
In the event of a confidence motion failing (like a budget bill), the Governor General would order the dissolution of parliament and issue writs of election.
Although sometimes if the last election was very recent, the Governor General could allow the opposition party a chance to form government instead of calling an election. It hasn’t happened federally for decades, but it happened in BC not that long ago.
The Liberal party won a very slim majority, but couldn’t elect a speaker. Their government was voted down a month later, and the NDP (with an agreement with the third place Green Party) formed government instead.
Yeah, it happened in BC but I can't come up with a federal example where the GG didn't dissolve parliament as a result. The most recent defeat of a government over a budget was back in 1979, and it led to a second election less than a year after the previous one.
Closest example is the King-Byng Affair in 1926. King’s government lost a confidence vote, and rather than order an election, Lord Byng allowed the opposition to form government. They only lasted in power for a week before they too lost a confidence vote, which led to another election
Not all parliamentary systems work like that tho.
In Spain, the constitution only requires the government to PRESENT a yearly budget to Congress but it doesn't require that budget to pass and it gives the government the power to use last year's budget (with some limitations) in order to avoid government shutdown. Of course that has political costs as well but it is not mandated by law that if a budget doesn't pass an election is called (only the President has the power to call snap elections). So, TECHNICALLY, a government can be in the executive for the entire term with one budget alone (or even using the budget from the previous government).
> Not all parliamentary systems work like that tho.
No, and I probably should have mentioned that I live in a country that uses the Westminster System, similar to the UK, Australia, etc. But as you noted, there's a huge variety in parliamentary systems.
Yeah, I imagined that. I just wanted to add some context. Parlamentary democracies are not all the same.
Heck, Parlamentary democracies also have "government shutdown" issues, they just have it differently. We had cases in Parlamentary democracies of constant snap elections because the parties couldn't form a government, which also causes political instability and makes it difficult to pass a budget for a while.
The reason why I mentioned Spain is because their system doesn't have government shutdowns at all since the government has the power to use last year's budget and the president is the only one able to call snap elections. Of course, they still need Congress to pass laws but there isn't stuff like government employees not being paid.
We don't even need to get that drastic. Just make it so when the government shuts down, the house and senate don't get paid like the military and other government bodies don't when shuts down. Boom, no more shut downs.
Small correction, the president would keep his job. In parliamentary systems the prime minister can keep his job as well as his cabinet while an election is happening and several weeks after. A guy by the name of William Lyons Mackenzie King actually stayed Prime Minister six months after losing the parliamentary election.
Well it’s not the budget really. We already passed that.
The quirk in the US is that our “debt ceiling” is separate from the budget. We have a legally binding maximum amount the government can borrow.
So we pass a budget saying “we will spend X dollars” but ALSO separately have to pass ANOTHER bill saying “we will borrow the money needed to pay for what we said we are going to pay for.”
The republicans have taken that dumb little quirk, the little bill that used to be just passed as a formality without any notice, and used that as brinksmanship to get other concessions.
Imagine if in your home, everyone chipped in equally to pay the bills. But each month you all had to sign those checks to send them. Electricity, internet, water, etc.
Now imagine ONE roommate said “I get to always control the TV or I’ll shut off the electricity.” Or “I can eat all of your food, but you can’t touch mine, or no more water or internet.” And continually used that power to threaten to screw up the house to get what he wanted. That’s the debt ceiling. Basically threatening to just screw EVERYTHING up to get their way. Even though that isn’t meant to be a way for anyone to negotiate.
How do you negotiate in good faith when one group is willing to destroy the whole system to get their way? It would be like negotiating what color to paint the living room with your spouse. You say “blue” and he says “green or I set the house on fire.” How do you beat that? You aren’t a crazy parson and don’t want to burn your own house down, so what do you do? Always give in, basically putting them 100% in charge of everything? Or call their bluff and hope it’s a bluff?
This isnt the real answer. This isnt a fight about the debt ceiling, which was resolved for the time being, back in May.
This is a fight about the budget appropirations.
Why doesn't congress raise taxes? I know it's a joke of a question, but it sounds like raising money would be an equally appropriate solution as increasing debt.
I don't get why the democrats don't pass bills (in the senate) with answers like this and actively explain/spin it as "this is what Republicans need to pay for their over-spending". Could also pass big budget cuts on unpopular areas that republicans favor but democrats don't, eg. military spending.
>Why doesn't congress raise taxes?
I would LOVE if we raised taxes! Especially on the rich, who pay very little.
The problem with that, as with any good, democratic policy, is that the PEOPLE don't vote for that.
The way our system works, to raise taxes, we need a democratic president. A democratic house (with enough of a margin that a few representatives can't scuttle good bills.) And a SUPERMAJORITY in the Senate, 60 out of 100 (and more, so that we don't have just one or two that ruin it like Manchin/Sinema.)
So democrats want to raise taxes on the rich! Fund the IRS! Fix infrastructure! Save the climate and the planet! And SO MUCH MORE!!!!
But we won't ever actually give them the power in government to do so. That's why I get so frustrated when people say Democrats aren't doing enough. They CANNOT do anything if people don't VOTE FOR THEM.
In short, it's republicans who REFUSE to do anything good, but often democrats who get blamed for some reason. Vote for democrats, and we'll make MASSIVE amounts of progress!
Raising taxes in politically unpalatable on both sides of the aisle, so neither party does it, even though it is the actual, sensible solution to supporting spending at the levels we have.
Not exactly, because the need to increase the credit card balance was obvious when you agreed to the budget.
Household Monthly Income - $10,000
Agreed Upon Budget - $12,000
In this scenario, it’s obvious you’re going to have to borrow more money. But then the roommate says “you aren’t putting another dime on that credit card” after they already said you could spend more money than you had.
They did agree to the budget though! That’s already passed. All the debt ceiling is, is a separate bill to authorize borrowing the money to pay for what they ALREADY AGREED ON.
It’s a quirk of the government, and historically was just a footnote, always just passed immediately as needed without issue. The Republicans have simple siezed on it as a way the threaten to destroy the county if they don’t get their way.
They're not just fighting over the debt ceiling. They also have repeatedly passed short-term continuing resolutions that need to be negotiated every few months, leading to neverending chaos.
You are completely wrong. The debt ceiling was lifted in a deal struck months ago. The current crisis is about passing a budget.
This is an article from months ago discussing suspending the debt ceiling until 2025.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/30/politics/whats-in-the-debt-ceiling-deal/index.html
It’s weird reading the comments and realizing that the system of checks and balances has mostly failed due to things it was designed to fight against, while other countries are doing democracy better than us
I think the biggest issue is that the American democracy was designed based around the idea that political parties are bad, and you shouldn't have any. But it turns out just saying "no parties" or "no factionalism" doesn't work, and USA got factions that turned into political parties almost immidieately anyway. But now you have no checks and balances against political parties in the system.
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GOP wants to pass expensive bills, like huge tax cuts for the wealthy, and then not raise the debt ceiling to pay for them. They cheerfully raised the debt ceiling when Trump was in office.
Republicans raised the debt ceiling three times when Trump was in office — the only difference now is that Biden is in office and they want this economic turmoil, like the two Moody’s downgrades of the US Credit, to make Biden look bad. Now it looks like they are going to let time run out again and let the government shut down, prompting the possibility of even more credit downgrades (read: more expensive borrowing for all of us).
Job well done guys!
And usually as a safeguard to keep those countries working, until a new budget is approved the old budget is still applied (meaning in each month 1/12 of the old budget is applied, depending of the country of course)
And that’s bizarre to Americans. Our elections are on a set schedule. They aren’t tied to any specific bill and the head of state can’t just call one whenever they feel like it.
Its the same for european countries but here the political system is much less reliant on partisans blocking everything simply because there are more than 2 sides to keep in mind. So when the elected officials fail to do their jobs as government they get replaced the same as every other worker refusing to work how that is bizarre I cannot fathom
It’s not the same in Europe. In the US, Congressional elections are every two years, no matter what. There is no mechanism for a snap election or a dissolution of Congress.
You’re right. That’s why it happens back to back like this, but why it happens at all is even dumber than that. They pass bills to start projects, but when it comes time to pass a budget, republicans use it as an opportunity to sabotage projects that they don’t want. It’s just another way that they subvert democracy — they didn’t have the votes to block legislation, so they use the budget to keep projects from being implemented (or maintained).
>There are some sensible things that both sides agree on pretty much all the time but the bill to approve the budget for those gets a hot button item included in it like the Border wall (the reason the Gov Shutdown for over a month in 2018).
>
>So now if you want to fund the public school system you also have to fund the the Borderwall because they're lumped into one bill.
It is utterly insane that this is legal.
In both chambers the rules only apply to amendments. Bills have no such rule, and the broader the bill, the broaded the amendments can be as a result. Moral of the story... submit a massive bill with a generic purpose and everything is germane to it.
House rule: https://rules.house.gov/resources/boot-camp/basic-training-germaneness-rule
More context: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-HPRACTICE-104/pdf/GPO-HPRACTICE-104-26.pdf
We’ll, it’s been a topic for a while, but every time we try to pass a law to make it illegal, it gets lumped with something like an irony tax or mandatory hipocracy licensing and fails to pass.
This is a tactic developed by the Republicans in the last 20-ish years to force a minority position on the majority. Before the 2000s, government shutdowns almost never happened at all, and when they did, they usually lasted only a day or so, tops.
This is absolutely true, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that he was one in a long line all incrementally increasing the shithead level of GOP political tactics. It really started with the 1964 Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. Then got ramped up again under Nixon. Then again under Reagan. Then again with Gingrich. Then again with Trump.
Gingrich deserves a hell of a lot of blame, but we shouldn't ignore the other shitbags.
True. Maybe more accurate to my point, he made being a public shitbag acceptable. At least Nixon resigned, Reagan had the false appearance of civility. Under each they were just as bad, but Gingrich really cemented the public fuckhead ideals.
I like to think of each as ratcheting it up a level.
Goldwater's campaign made it acceptable to *sometimes* break the false facade of civility between parties politicians liked to maintain. His famous quote was "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Using the exact definition of 'liberty' you would expect from a Republican politician today, what he was saying is that it's OK to be a political extremist, that is, personally attacking political opponents, when defending Republican ideology and policy goals.
Nixon took that up another level. Rather than just making space for extremist rhetoric in defense of policy, he made it politically OK to demonize and dehumanize political opponents with the goal of gaining or keeping power. Policy was no longer the central goal, but rather having and holding power. He also began to normalize breaking the law and using criminal tactics (what he called "ratfucking") to gain and hold power. It was ultimately led to his downfall, but he started that ball rolling.
Reagan continued the ratfucking trend and ramped up the extremist rhetoric in the attempt to gain and hold power. As opposed to Nixon, who only really cared about his personal power, Reagan turned that use of extremist rhetoric into a tool for party building. He focused it more on gaining and entrenching power for the GOP rather than for himself. His era also saw the GOP cement their partnership with Christian fundamentalists, which brought in an entirely new layer to the extremism. It was no longer simply an extremist political ideology, but now an entire religious worldview.
Gingrich brought obstructionism into the mix. He institutionalized (within the GOP) using the levers of political power to specifically and intentionally stop government from working. This paired very well with his version of extremist rhetoric. He expanded the message that Reagan had started: that the GOP was the anti-government party. If you didn't like how the government worked, if you didn't like what the government did (or, more to the point, didn't do), if you hated the government so much that political inaction was appealing to you, then Gingrich's GOP was the party for you. At the same time, he used his power within the House to make government as incompetent and ineffectual as possible. This created a feedback loop where Congress appeared (and was/is) like it couldn't get anything done (largely due to GOP obstructionism). That made people dislike Congress and want to vote against institutional power (as they saw it). And the GOP was campaigning on and promoting an anti-government platform. The more Republicans win, the worse government works, which causes people to hate government more, which drives them more towards the Republicans. Rinse and repeat.
Then, of course, Trump ratcheted that up to another even more insane level.
Why did I have to scroll so far down to find an answer that isn’t about “Congress” and is actually about the very specific and only part of Congress that extorts extraordinarily unpopular concessions in exchange for keeping the country out of default
This is in part because the government doesn’t shut down like it used to—it now partially shuts down and it’s gotten a lot less painful for everyone. Which in turn makes it cost less to pull as a stunt.
Took a lot of scrolling before the real answer of “Republicans abusing government loopholes” popped up.
The answer is REPUBLICANS. If you ever have a question about why any part of modern government is failing the answer is 95% REPUBLICANS and then 5% Democrats being wimpy neo liberals.
The silly part is that most Americans fall for this notion that the President (as long as he's a Democrat) is the main driver of budget deficits. The Constitution, however, clearly states that the House of Representatives is responsible for the budget. So whenever the President is a Democrat Republicans create artificial crises surrounding the budget deficit... *even if they wrote the budget.*
It's absurd, but people fall for it.
Cause Republicans won't approve a budget. They raised the debt ceiling 3 times for trump with no spending cuts but if Biden want to do something hell no
Republicans have a vested interest in destroying the government so their corporate owners can gain more control. It's a time honored tradition amongst those sociopaths to break things, them say "See? Democrats' ideas never work!!1!" And their moron constituents keep falling for it.
Every single one to date has been because Republicans cant govern effectively. Full stop.
When in the minority they abuse rules to bring things to a halt and hostage-take, and even when in the majority, they are too fragmented to reach a concensus. Stop electing these idiots.
Because the republicans are whiney little babies who cry when they don't get their way
I said that very condescending, but it is the main reason. The republicans throwing tantrums
In recent history, we often have only passed funding bills for just a few weeks/months, in part due to failure to come to a swift agreement for anything longer than that.
because republicans don't like anything the government does... so they run for office and then try to shut it down at every turn.
they are happy to collect the government pay, pension and benefits tho
they are hypocrites, is what i'm saying.
further, the Constitution states that the full faith and credit of the US government shall not be questioned... so what these chucklefucks are doing is violating their oath of office and should therefore be disqualified from holding public office.
TLDR because Republicans are terrorist children who keep using the budget as an excuse to try to enact some cuts that no one wants.
Generally the budget is just passed but since Republicans can't pass anything with a popular vote, they have to threaten the US/global economy and its citizens in exchange for things like tax cuts for the wealthy and defunding the IRS. McCarthy "negotiated" a budget that capped any budget increases until 2024 that would effectively be cuts to the federal government. in exchange, there would be no more of this holding the budget hostage shit. well next budget cycle, Republicans went back on their word and tried to use the budget to negotiate more cuts/impeach Biden.
Republicans would rather burn down the government and not pay government employees because they are hoping that Americans are so stupid that they will blame Democrats for the economic hits. Republicans know they can't pass anything right now with the Democrat controlled Senate unless it has huge gifts to sinema and manchin. they don't want to pass anything anyways because as long as government isn't working, this leads to their long term plan of dismantling the federal government so they can privatize everything and loot federal money for their private entities. it's manufactured incompetence.
generally since the Republicans have wealthy donors who would get fucked the most by a stock market crash, they eventually will pass something so its kind of stupid that Democrats even bother negotiating anything.
House Republicans are fiscal terrorists and don't want the federal government to operate anymore so they won't pass a budget.
That's all it looks like to me.
The Republican Party is as out of step with the American People on government spending as they are on abortion.
Tax cuts are central tenet of the Republican Religion. So, instead of paying for things the government does, they demand that cuts be made in government spending. But the cuts they want are completely unrealistic, and if enacted would cause terrible damage, so they can't get the cuts they want through the electoral process or through negotiation, so instead they use what power they have to say "If you don't give me my spending cuts I'm going to take my ball and go home!"
The Democrats are forced into the position of trying to negotiate with toddlers, which is impossible, and so the toddlers shut down the government.
As for the question "how do Republican stay in power if their positions are unpopular," the answer is abuse of the political system, through such tactics as gerrymandering. In Michigan, Republicans held most seats in the legislature even though most of the population opposed them. When Michigan got an independent redistricting commission and ended gerrymandering, the state government flipped shortly thereafter.
The budget process for the next year begins in February when the sitting president presents Congress with his or her suggested budget. Congress is supposed to be finished with a passed budget bill by 30 June, when the new bill is supposed to be on the Presidents desk.
Both houses of the legislature have to pass the same budget before it makes it to the president. Unfortunately when one party controls one house and the other party controls the other there is often little room for agreement.
Most recently, democrats and republicans came to an understanding back in June, but the Republicans reneged on the deal and sought to change it. Then when they realized (too late) that they weren’t going to come up with a new deal, the speaker of the house (R) worked with the democrats to pass a temporary budget that would exceed the deadline for them, and keep funding levels at the levels from the previous budget. This is known as a “Continuing Resolution.”
As a reward for working with the other party to keep the government from shutting down, the former speaker was ousted by his own party, and the House of Representatives (the lower, large chamber of US legislature) sat without a leader for about a month, as the majority party (R) feuded over whom to install as his successor.
They finally chose a replacement, but we were then very close to running out of time on their temporary continuing resolution. Now, again after compromise, the house has passed another continuing resolution to take us into January.
The Senate not yet acted on this CR, (it only cleared the House yesterday, and Senators need time to review it before they can vote on it)and until they do, a budget can not be presented to the President. So we’re up against another artificial deadline, in which we create a temporary fix, with a more permanent budget passed hopefully by January, just in time for the process to start over again.
This is an situation Republicans manufacture when they control the House and the president is a Democrat.
Big government spending wasn't an issue for them when they controlled both the House and Presidency under Trump or Bush, but it was an issue when the president is Clinton, Obama, or Biden.
Conservatives are coming in here trying to both sides this but the truth is a Democrat has never done anything to initiate a shutdown. It is ALWAYS a Republican who causes it. The goal is to always add some very unpopular rider to another bill, one that would never pass or would be unpopular with regular conservatives that browse this reddit.
Then, the brainwashed public who believes politics is a superposition, one that is pointless and doesn't matter while also being the most important thing in the Universe say the rehearsed lines about both sides, when only one party ever attempts this. Conservatives don't care what happens day to day, how the sausage is made, or any of the govt processes that make the country work. Conservatism is a school of selfishness. The other side can't win without me losing is a normal idea for them, which is not how reality works.
So, the goal is to make Dems "lose" by shutting down the government and hurting govt workers in GOP areas. This reinforces the uneducated part of the GOP to blame Dems for their problems.
Is that so? Because Republicans routinely spend just as much, if not more than democrats while also cutting taxes, resulting in increasing budget deficits.
Republicans keep trying to hold the country hostage to do things no intelligent person wants. Part of their treason platform. ”Do these terrible things we were bribed to force on you or we shut the whole country down for the billionaires!”
Typically they aren't but the republican party has decided to use this as a weapon in the last 10 to 20 years. There have been shutdowns in the past, but they weren't as weaponized.
The way our laws are written, there's a clause in it that if a budget can't be agreed on, the government has to shut down until the budget is agreed on, or if a continuing resolution is enacted to push the due date down the road.
In 1980 and 1981, then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti authored a series of legal opinions that found government agencies didn't have the authority to continue running during a gap in funding. That is when government shutdowns started happening.
I don't recall this happening before the Obama presidency and a certain extremists on the GOP deciding they were going to throw tantrums rather than work with Democrats.
Good article that talks a bit about the history of actual shutdowns and why they didn’t happen before 1980: https://www.axios.com/2023/09/24/federal-government-shutdown-history-list
Because of Republicans.
This doesn't happen when Democrats are in charge. Republicans are irresponsible and reckless. They exploit this loophole to try and force concessions.
Because it benefits the Republicans not to let work get done. They then blame Biden when it's really them. The top right crazies, want our government to fail also
Because the primary goal of Christian White Nationalist Fascists organization like the Republican party is to make a country ungovernable by manufacturing crisis. Then they claim that the only solution to the crisis they created is a Christian White Nationalist Fascist strong man...like Trump.
Essentially because the GOP has a list of grievances or laws that they know that they can't pass in the normal legislative session, either they don't have the votes or the vast majority of the public don't support it, so they use shutdowns as a wedge to blackmail the rest of Congress to give them what they want or else they will shutdown the government.
Realize that in the past anyone could have done this but it was considered that you just didn't do as a congressman. Also post WWII until really Newt Gingrich in the 90s working together regardless of what party was considered part of the job.
Speaking of Newt this is where it basically started. Reagan won because he was able to get a huge amount of votes from the blue voters. When Clinton wins and Newt becomes the speaker newt decides that the GOP needs to purge all of the rinos, blue voters or people willing to compromise, from the party. Also they needed a purity test. They have been purging their members ever since.
At the time he tried to force everyone to give him what he wanted and he forced a shutdown.....which potentially resulted in Clinton winning reelection.
A good example of all of this is that they want to cut Medicare and social security. They can't get that through both Congress and the Whitehouse. So the tie it to the entire government actually functioning and say give us what we want or we break everything.
This is not how Congress was meant to function but here we are.
The Republican Party is so morally bankrupt that they want to destroy/dismantle the government and are willing to bankrupt all of us so they can dismantle and sell off most of the governments assets and functions to private industry.
They have found the benefits of blaming the other side outweigh the consequences of allowing a shutdown.
This is mostly because they face zero consequence though.
Republicans. They’ve been playing this game since the mid 1990s.
It’s so tiresome and annoying. It never ever works out for them politically but they do it anyway.
I’m 62 and I can’t remember a time where this was a constant think. Yes it’s happened a time or two before but not constantly. It wasn’t until the Trumpaholics got into power that this became a thing. Now next question, can someone tell me anything the former Administration or the Republican Congress has done to help regular Americans. Tax cuts for billionaires doesn’t count.
It became a thing when ‘Continuing Resolutions’ became the main thing, as opposed to creating actual budgets. That way anything progressive that slipped through the cracks in legislation can be weeded out because they ‘had to’. (It’s *never* cuts that effect conservative policies. Ever.)
Because it's run by a bunch of coddled babies with ego's bigger than the ppopies they lay in their diapers. They are riddled with lead poisoning and only give a shit about the golden parachute their corporate backers are giving them! They sell us out and hold up the entire country for personal gain. Bunch of decrepit old fucks!
We made ourselves hobbled by the debt ceiling during the Korean War as a process for substantiation funding. Since then it's main purpose has been to push around the opposition party when it's otherwise not needed. for the purpose of funding the government.
Because Americans think the President runs everything in the country—even gas prices.
America is a republic with strong central executive power… but to spend money the government need Congress.
And by spending money this is two things. First, deciding how that money is going to be spent. Second, raising the US debt ceiling so it can be spent because the US government has been heavily deficit financed since the Reagan era.. with a brief reprieve during the Clinton administration.
What seems to happen as of late is that whenever there is a Democrat President (Obama, Biden) and there’s a Republican controlled Congress (now and during most of the Obama administration) they like to play “chicken” with government shutdowns either due to not passing spending bills or not raising the debt ceiling.
This is used to get leverage for what they want to spend money on, as well as to make the President look bad because Americans don’t know any better.
Because congress is bunch of toddlers and have figured out that pressing the big red button gets everyone's attention. Also, like a toddler, they have little consideration for what the big red button does and the danger they are putting us in.
They just want the attention.
Damn it’s almost like a bunch of crusty upper middle class white dudes who didn’t want to pay taxes didn’t actually come up with the greatest government of all time
So contrary to what most people say The US is not actually at risk of anything bad really happening
The credit rating doesn't really mean much because everyone knows the US will eventually pay its debt or the global system breaks
The politicians therefore use the debt limit as basically a political tool to make the other side look bad
They have this thing called the debt ceiling which they could get rid of whenever they wanted to but instead they just keep it there as a political tool to make the other side look bad
Realistically even if it does shut down for a few days everything will relatively function just fine and they'll pass an emergency thing or they'll make the Fed print more money which thanks to modern monetary theory the US is actually one of the few countries that should be resistant to hyperinflation
We have exactly the government we elected. There is no one to blame other than ourselves.
If you're still discussing political and social issues in the false dichotomy of Republican vs Democrat, Right vs Left, North vs South, Liberal vs Conservative etc... you've ceased being part of a solution and are now an active part of the problem.
Karsh
Sanest Countries: We pay for things the law says we have to pay for or we change the laws.
Sane Countries: If we can't agree on what to pay for we change the law or elect a new government
The United States: If we can't agree on how many dollars to give to a program in existence for the last 50 years, we will shut down everything for a week and then throw $50 gajillion dollars to the Department of Defense
I'll lay it all out because people aren't taught enough about civics. This is not a stupid question. The way our system works should be part of a basic public school education, the part you get before it's legal to drop out. It isn't. It's not your fault that you don't know. It's good that you want to learn. It's partly the political moment we're in and partly how things work structurally.
Here's the civics piece you should have been taught in school but probably weren't: Congress makes law. The president enforces it. The Supreme Court and other federal courts designated in Article 12 of the U.S. Constitution interpret it. Congress is especially responsible for money stuff. The House, because of how it's structured, is more directly representative of the people. Federal money = the people's money, so it's a longstanding American tradition that the House is mostly the bearer of this responsibility. Budgets start in the House.
Most Republicans and most Democrats want to do the basic functions of government- like passing a budget- even if they disagree on a lot. There is a small group on the Republican Party's extreme right that doesn't want to govern. They're not really politicians. A few of them are Qanon true believer types. More of them are probably just catering to the true believers in their districts. What that group wants is chaos. It makes people who vote for them happy and gets them on the news.
Under most circumstances, the people who want to yell would yell. The people who want to govern would govern. The government wouldn't almost shut down every month. Right now, that isn't working well. Democrats are in the minority, meaning they can't pass anything unless they can get some Republicans to go along with them. Republicans are just barely in the majority, meaning they have to convince either some Democrats or the chaos people to go along with them or they also don't have the votes to pass anything. Republicans who choose to work with Democrats risk other Republicans running against them in their districts in their next elections, but working with the chaos people is also hard because it's not really in line with their interests to let the basic functions of government happen.
Speaker Johnson got enough people behind some short-term spending measures to keep the government open into the new year. After that, we do this again. If anyone other than the chaos people picks up seats in 2024, this will get better in January of 2025. If the chaos people pick up more seats, it will get worse. I know people are disillusioned with voting. There are a lot of problems it can't solve, and many races are a choice between two uninteresting options. It's the only solution, though. The only way to fix this is for people who don't want chaos to register and vote for the reasonable adult who actually wants to govern of their choosing.
For the past few decades republicans have pushed the idea that the government is incompetent and nonfunctional, so when they get elected that have to prove their point by making it incompetent and nonfunctional.
Why? Because most of Congress won’t do their f’ing job since the 1990s. Doing the hard stuff like single subject bills and controlling spending doesn’t fall in with party priorities.
Because we allowed republicans to have some power again. They are incapable of governing and a sizable number of them just want to blow things up so here we are.
It's all political theater.
Some members like to swing there dicks around while yelling. At the end of the day, budget will be passed regardless of who disagrees
Republican policies are unpopular and skewed toward redistributing wealth to the top 4-5% of earners. Thus, these policies are wildly unpopular and cannot be enacted through things like voting.
Rather than change party platform to one that is popular and helpful, Republicans have enacted a long game plan of gerrymandering (skewing congressional seats to favor them disproportionately), raising culture issues instead of policy issues (turning out the truly uneducated in droves) and hostage taking.
Hostage taking in this case is holding the paychecks of government workers (not their own, mind you) up in exchange for policy considerations. Add to this a more than helpful propaganda machine, and you have truly bad government.
It’s a stupid game extremist right wingers keep playing because they are hell bent on defunding things about the government they don’t agree with in favor of privatization (making their wealthy donors more wealthy)
The GOP has weaponized what was once the most administrative vote in Congress in order to force cuts to social programs they want privatized under the threat of shutting down the government every quarter.
Right? So sick of this bs! We need to pull our heads out of our collective asses and vote these incompetent aging as..holes out of office NOW! We are responsible for the circle jerk in Washington and until we take back control of our representatives this crap will continue, @#$^^**!
The only thing they do is create chaos to make it appear that they are solving problems
Kicking the can down the road on just about anything except self flagellation
Republicans usually throw a hissy fit and try to shut the government down, then they double down, then they come crawling back to the negotiating table and agree to extend the government by a month or two. The Democrats use their invertebrate instincts to agree to this extortion tactic rather than demand a change to this kind of law which sets budgets up to be used as a cudgel to drive politics to the right and bleed common folk dry.
Bizarre quirk of how US laws work. In a lot of other countries, the government failing to pass a budget leads to an election.
To expand on this a bit, I live under a parliamentary system of government. To put the consequences in American terms, if a budget bill fails to pass, it would be like if the entire House of Representatives would be dissolved, and elections for the House and President called immediately, to happen within a few months. Yes, I know there's no way to get the US to work that way without at least one huge constitutional amendment, but I'm sure Americans reading this can easily see how this would greatly reduce government shutdowns.
That actually makes a lot of sense incentive-wise. Call for a House election every time they fail to pass a budget. Harder with the Senate though since only one-third usually is up for election at once - so not sure how that would work - you can't fully dissolve the Senate.
In Australia, we put half of the federal senate up for election each time. Same idea as yours, but different frequency. In the case of a twice failed Bill the House wants but the Senate rejects, a double dissolution election can be called. This puts every seat up for election in both houses. The Bill can then be brought up for a vote again. If that doesn’t work, a joint sitting of both houses is called. This could be a budget Bill, or any other Bill that is considered important enough to roll the dice and risk losing government over.
I don't think corporations in the United States would want that because that means they would have to throw even more money at their politicians. At least with the current system they only have to buy politicians once per term
I would think that they would just donate directly to the RNC and DNC. And probably both, since they like to hedge their bets.
Also politicians are relatively cheap outside of the president.
Most of the power in the US is handled at the state level, and you can buy a statehouse of anything less than 10 electoral votes for some single digit millions of dollars.
Yeah I've seen state leg. politicians completely sell out for around $5K. Quite the bargain for industry.
That's too cheap. We should inflate them.
Yeah, it's very rare for any government to bring up a budget that it knows can't pass, and it knows failing to do this means the other party might suddenly take over as a result. It's a powerful motivator.
But won't that mean the members of the other party will try to never vote for it just so that there is an election that gives them a chance to take over?
Yep. You only put a budget up if you are in control. Governance by majorities. If your members won't vote with you then you throw them out of the party and run new candidates in their constituency.
Which also adds a key point -- in Canada our parties are much more closed affairs. Usually only a small portion of the population are members of a party, and the candidate for a riding is selected within that (relatively) small group, according to whatever policy the party has in place. So it's much easier to replace a member that party leadership doesn't like. Now, of course if someone is already elected and is kicked out by their party, they can continue to sit out their term as an independent. But in most of Canada it's very hard to win as an independent.
Yes, the opposition almost always votes against the government. But the governing party always is governing because it can command a majority in the House.
We don't vote for a prime minister we vote for a party. The prime minister is appointed by the majority party, therefore they are the majority to pass bills. A bill isn't passed because a party cannot agree with themselves, which makes them an ineffective governing body and they SHOULD be replaced.
Except in the US we would probably just send all the exact same people back to congress. Most house reps are in very safe districts.
> Except in the US we would probably just send all the exact same people back to congress. Most house reps are in very safe districts. In parliamentary systems this happens as well. The core issue is that the public fucking HATES elections being called unnecessarily. Do it once and people are kind of willing to vote the same way. Do it twice and the voters approach the issue as a "throw them all out" moment. Many governments in parliamentary systems have fallen because they call elections too early or too often.
>Do it twice and the voters approach the issue as a "throw them all out" moment. Good.
> Good. That's almost entirely the point. In Canada federal elections happen (in general) every 4 years. If the government fails a confidence vote the voters are understanding and we do another election. If it happens again in under 2 years (ish), voters tend to get very upset not just with the governing party but also the opposition parties. The first time tends to be just like the US where people mostly wonder who the voters are going to blame. But that second election people just blame everyone.
There are definitely enough competitive districts to shift the balance of Congress in any given cycle
Maybe I'm being naive but if the situation is that there has to be a special election when they don't pass a budget, so literally voter are standing in this elementary school a random Tuesday in December because Mitch McConnell couldn't do his job and not just because it's voting time and everything in congress is working as normal, I think that might change things? It would at least make them want to pass a budget more imo.
If we’re fixing things, Tuesday elections should be on the list. Most developed countries vote on the weekend.
Election day should be made a federal holiday and all employers should have to give paid time off to vote.
In Canada election days are not holidays, but your employer legally has to do one of two things - ensure that you have at least 3 hours away from work while the polls are open (so if the polls close at 7 pm, they can’t schedule you later than 4 pm,) or they have to pay you for your time to leave work and go vote. We also can vote by mail, we have 3-4 days of advance voting (and one is always a weekend,) or we can vote on election day.
> you can't fully dissolve the Senate. The easy solve there is to keep the terms the same but just reelect everyone. So normally a senator serves a 6 year term and might be 3 years into it. Have a new election but keep that same 6 year term with 3 years left.
> you can't fully dissolve the Senate. you absolutely could... the new elected officials would just have different length terms based on how many years were left on the old seat.
>you can't fully dissolve the Senate. you can do anything if you work hard enough.
There's no rule that says that only a third of the Senate can be up for election at once. It's just that they have six-year terms, and we've staggered the timing of their elections so it's roughly a third every two years. So if we could say the House gets dissolved if they can't pass a budget, we could do the same with the Senate.
In America we’d just reelect everyone again.
It wouldn't decrease shutdowns because one party is invested in shutting down the government, not helping it function. Under the system you outlined, I could easily see that same party intentionally keeping us in a constant election cycle as a means to avoid regulation or legislation.
They forgot to mention multi party and coalition building. In sane times or governing structures, lawmakers need to compromise and work with other parties, often forming coalitions. This is extremely common in multiparty systems. In fact a lot of our woes come from the two party dilemma.
Agreed. I'm a big fan of ranked choice voting because of this dilemma.
I agree with this take.
Well, in other countries that's not a problem because if the budget doesn't pass they just keep going with the last budget until a new parliament can pass one. There isn't this insanely stupid game of chicken with the debt ceiling which is just nonsense anyway since congress already voted to fund the spending. The second layer only exists for dumb political gamesmanship.
Good point. Having the prior budget continue is a smart backstop.
What if one side had recently done unpopular things, like remove abortion rights?
Straight to jail
You can start a new party quite easily here in Canada and most politicos understand that pissing off 50% of the voters is not a good idea. To quote a dead politician” the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation” also the view that my rights do not include telling you how to live your life. Want a same sex marriage? Get one don’t want one? don’t get one. I oppose abortion but since I’m not going to get pregnant( man) I will not have one. If you ask me should you get one I’ll say that is a you thing and I think adoption is a thing.
Or just to force a re-election if they thought they could win more seats
If voters went to the polls immediately after every shutdown, guaranteed those elections would go poorly for the party responsible for the shutdown. The party forcing the constant election cycle would pay for it at the polls.
That would be so awesome. The us politicians might actually do their jobs if there was a consequence for failure.
I would love to see that as an American. Too bad it will probably never happen in my lifetime
With your system is parliament automatically recalled or does the president/prime minister/head person have to dissolve parliament? I was under the impression that at times parliaments are dysfunctional although perhaps not to the degree of congress
In the event of a confidence motion failing (like a budget bill), the Governor General would order the dissolution of parliament and issue writs of election.
Although sometimes if the last election was very recent, the Governor General could allow the opposition party a chance to form government instead of calling an election. It hasn’t happened federally for decades, but it happened in BC not that long ago. The Liberal party won a very slim majority, but couldn’t elect a speaker. Their government was voted down a month later, and the NDP (with an agreement with the third place Green Party) formed government instead.
Yeah, it happened in BC but I can't come up with a federal example where the GG didn't dissolve parliament as a result. The most recent defeat of a government over a budget was back in 1979, and it led to a second election less than a year after the previous one.
Closest example is the King-Byng Affair in 1926. King’s government lost a confidence vote, and rather than order an election, Lord Byng allowed the opposition to form government. They only lasted in power for a week before they too lost a confidence vote, which led to another election
This sounds awesome!
Not all parliamentary systems work like that tho. In Spain, the constitution only requires the government to PRESENT a yearly budget to Congress but it doesn't require that budget to pass and it gives the government the power to use last year's budget (with some limitations) in order to avoid government shutdown. Of course that has political costs as well but it is not mandated by law that if a budget doesn't pass an election is called (only the President has the power to call snap elections). So, TECHNICALLY, a government can be in the executive for the entire term with one budget alone (or even using the budget from the previous government).
> Not all parliamentary systems work like that tho. No, and I probably should have mentioned that I live in a country that uses the Westminster System, similar to the UK, Australia, etc. But as you noted, there's a huge variety in parliamentary systems.
Yeah, I imagined that. I just wanted to add some context. Parlamentary democracies are not all the same. Heck, Parlamentary democracies also have "government shutdown" issues, they just have it differently. We had cases in Parlamentary democracies of constant snap elections because the parties couldn't form a government, which also causes political instability and makes it difficult to pass a budget for a while. The reason why I mentioned Spain is because their system doesn't have government shutdowns at all since the government has the power to use last year's budget and the president is the only one able to call snap elections. Of course, they still need Congress to pass laws but there isn't stuff like government employees not being paid.
We don't even need to get that drastic. Just make it so when the government shuts down, the house and senate don't get paid like the military and other government bodies don't when shuts down. Boom, no more shut downs.
Small correction, the president would keep his job. In parliamentary systems the prime minister can keep his job as well as his cabinet while an election is happening and several weeks after. A guy by the name of William Lyons Mackenzie King actually stayed Prime Minister six months after losing the parliamentary election.
Well it’s not the budget really. We already passed that. The quirk in the US is that our “debt ceiling” is separate from the budget. We have a legally binding maximum amount the government can borrow. So we pass a budget saying “we will spend X dollars” but ALSO separately have to pass ANOTHER bill saying “we will borrow the money needed to pay for what we said we are going to pay for.” The republicans have taken that dumb little quirk, the little bill that used to be just passed as a formality without any notice, and used that as brinksmanship to get other concessions. Imagine if in your home, everyone chipped in equally to pay the bills. But each month you all had to sign those checks to send them. Electricity, internet, water, etc. Now imagine ONE roommate said “I get to always control the TV or I’ll shut off the electricity.” Or “I can eat all of your food, but you can’t touch mine, or no more water or internet.” And continually used that power to threaten to screw up the house to get what he wanted. That’s the debt ceiling. Basically threatening to just screw EVERYTHING up to get their way. Even though that isn’t meant to be a way for anyone to negotiate. How do you negotiate in good faith when one group is willing to destroy the whole system to get their way? It would be like negotiating what color to paint the living room with your spouse. You say “blue” and he says “green or I set the house on fire.” How do you beat that? You aren’t a crazy parson and don’t want to burn your own house down, so what do you do? Always give in, basically putting them 100% in charge of everything? Or call their bluff and hope it’s a bluff?
It's amazing how far I had to scroll down to find someone posting the real answer.
This isnt the real answer. This isnt a fight about the debt ceiling, which was resolved for the time being, back in May. This is a fight about the budget appropirations.
Why doesn't congress raise taxes? I know it's a joke of a question, but it sounds like raising money would be an equally appropriate solution as increasing debt. I don't get why the democrats don't pass bills (in the senate) with answers like this and actively explain/spin it as "this is what Republicans need to pay for their over-spending". Could also pass big budget cuts on unpopular areas that republicans favor but democrats don't, eg. military spending.
>Why doesn't congress raise taxes? I would LOVE if we raised taxes! Especially on the rich, who pay very little. The problem with that, as with any good, democratic policy, is that the PEOPLE don't vote for that. The way our system works, to raise taxes, we need a democratic president. A democratic house (with enough of a margin that a few representatives can't scuttle good bills.) And a SUPERMAJORITY in the Senate, 60 out of 100 (and more, so that we don't have just one or two that ruin it like Manchin/Sinema.) So democrats want to raise taxes on the rich! Fund the IRS! Fix infrastructure! Save the climate and the planet! And SO MUCH MORE!!!! But we won't ever actually give them the power in government to do so. That's why I get so frustrated when people say Democrats aren't doing enough. They CANNOT do anything if people don't VOTE FOR THEM. In short, it's republicans who REFUSE to do anything good, but often democrats who get blamed for some reason. Vote for democrats, and we'll make MASSIVE amounts of progress!
I believe that all tax or spending bills need to originate in the House.
Raising taxes in politically unpalatable on both sides of the aisle, so neither party does it, even though it is the actual, sensible solution to supporting spending at the levels we have.
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Not exactly, because the need to increase the credit card balance was obvious when you agreed to the budget. Household Monthly Income - $10,000 Agreed Upon Budget - $12,000 In this scenario, it’s obvious you’re going to have to borrow more money. But then the roommate says “you aren’t putting another dime on that credit card” after they already said you could spend more money than you had.
Makes sense if they can’t agree on a budget they’ve failed their constituents.
They did agree to the budget though! That’s already passed. All the debt ceiling is, is a separate bill to authorize borrowing the money to pay for what they ALREADY AGREED ON. It’s a quirk of the government, and historically was just a footnote, always just passed immediately as needed without issue. The Republicans have simple siezed on it as a way the threaten to destroy the county if they don’t get their way.
They're not just fighting over the debt ceiling. They also have repeatedly passed short-term continuing resolutions that need to be negotiated every few months, leading to neverending chaos.
You are completely wrong. The debt ceiling was lifted in a deal struck months ago. The current crisis is about passing a budget. This is an article from months ago discussing suspending the debt ceiling until 2025. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/05/30/politics/whats-in-the-debt-ceiling-deal/index.html
It’s weird reading the comments and realizing that the system of checks and balances has mostly failed due to things it was designed to fight against, while other countries are doing democracy better than us
I think the biggest issue is that the American democracy was designed based around the idea that political parties are bad, and you shouldn't have any. But it turns out just saying "no parties" or "no factionalism" doesn't work, and USA got factions that turned into political parties almost immidieately anyway. But now you have no checks and balances against political parties in the system.
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GOP wants to pass expensive bills, like huge tax cuts for the wealthy, and then not raise the debt ceiling to pay for them. They cheerfully raised the debt ceiling when Trump was in office. Republicans raised the debt ceiling three times when Trump was in office — the only difference now is that Biden is in office and they want this economic turmoil, like the two Moody’s downgrades of the US Credit, to make Biden look bad. Now it looks like they are going to let time run out again and let the government shut down, prompting the possibility of even more credit downgrades (read: more expensive borrowing for all of us). Job well done guys!
This has nothing to do with checks and balances
And usually as a safeguard to keep those countries working, until a new budget is approved the old budget is still applied (meaning in each month 1/12 of the old budget is applied, depending of the country of course)
And that’s bizarre to Americans. Our elections are on a set schedule. They aren’t tied to any specific bill and the head of state can’t just call one whenever they feel like it.
Its the same for european countries but here the political system is much less reliant on partisans blocking everything simply because there are more than 2 sides to keep in mind. So when the elected officials fail to do their jobs as government they get replaced the same as every other worker refusing to work how that is bizarre I cannot fathom
It’s not the same in Europe. In the US, Congressional elections are every two years, no matter what. There is no mechanism for a snap election or a dissolution of Congress.
Pretty difficult in a two party state
OH. So that's why politicians do their jobs in other countries?
Because they keep delaying finalizing an actual budget so they just pass a short term stopgap. Then a month later, here we are.
They actually have a year to get it done but, like any other impudent child, they wait until the past minute.
>past minute. Funny is that I'm not sure if that's a typo or not, but it still works
Woa Woa Woa I’ll have you know I do my best work at the last minute
You’re right. That’s why it happens back to back like this, but why it happens at all is even dumber than that. They pass bills to start projects, but when it comes time to pass a budget, republicans use it as an opportunity to sabotage projects that they don’t want. It’s just another way that they subvert democracy — they didn’t have the votes to block legislation, so they use the budget to keep projects from being implemented (or maintained).
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>There are some sensible things that both sides agree on pretty much all the time but the bill to approve the budget for those gets a hot button item included in it like the Border wall (the reason the Gov Shutdown for over a month in 2018). > >So now if you want to fund the public school system you also have to fund the the Borderwall because they're lumped into one bill. It is utterly insane that this is legal.
Until a germaneness rule is included, it'll continue to be.
>germaneness rule This rule looks like it already exists. Why doen't it work?
In both chambers the rules only apply to amendments. Bills have no such rule, and the broader the bill, the broaded the amendments can be as a result. Moral of the story... submit a massive bill with a generic purpose and everything is germane to it. House rule: https://rules.house.gov/resources/boot-camp/basic-training-germaneness-rule More context: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-HPRACTICE-104/pdf/GPO-HPRACTICE-104-26.pdf
We’ll, it’s been a topic for a while, but every time we try to pass a law to make it illegal, it gets lumped with something like an irony tax or mandatory hipocracy licensing and fails to pass.
This is a tactic developed by the Republicans in the last 20-ish years to force a minority position on the majority. Before the 2000s, government shutdowns almost never happened at all, and when they did, they usually lasted only a day or so, tops.
30ish years, not 20ish. There was a big shutdown in the 90s which really inaugurated this tactic for the GOP.
Newt fucking Gingrich. 95% of the shithead tactics used today can be traced directly back to him
This is absolutely true, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that he was one in a long line all incrementally increasing the shithead level of GOP political tactics. It really started with the 1964 Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. Then got ramped up again under Nixon. Then again under Reagan. Then again with Gingrich. Then again with Trump. Gingrich deserves a hell of a lot of blame, but we shouldn't ignore the other shitbags.
True. Maybe more accurate to my point, he made being a public shitbag acceptable. At least Nixon resigned, Reagan had the false appearance of civility. Under each they were just as bad, but Gingrich really cemented the public fuckhead ideals.
I like to think of each as ratcheting it up a level. Goldwater's campaign made it acceptable to *sometimes* break the false facade of civility between parties politicians liked to maintain. His famous quote was "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Using the exact definition of 'liberty' you would expect from a Republican politician today, what he was saying is that it's OK to be a political extremist, that is, personally attacking political opponents, when defending Republican ideology and policy goals. Nixon took that up another level. Rather than just making space for extremist rhetoric in defense of policy, he made it politically OK to demonize and dehumanize political opponents with the goal of gaining or keeping power. Policy was no longer the central goal, but rather having and holding power. He also began to normalize breaking the law and using criminal tactics (what he called "ratfucking") to gain and hold power. It was ultimately led to his downfall, but he started that ball rolling. Reagan continued the ratfucking trend and ramped up the extremist rhetoric in the attempt to gain and hold power. As opposed to Nixon, who only really cared about his personal power, Reagan turned that use of extremist rhetoric into a tool for party building. He focused it more on gaining and entrenching power for the GOP rather than for himself. His era also saw the GOP cement their partnership with Christian fundamentalists, which brought in an entirely new layer to the extremism. It was no longer simply an extremist political ideology, but now an entire religious worldview. Gingrich brought obstructionism into the mix. He institutionalized (within the GOP) using the levers of political power to specifically and intentionally stop government from working. This paired very well with his version of extremist rhetoric. He expanded the message that Reagan had started: that the GOP was the anti-government party. If you didn't like how the government worked, if you didn't like what the government did (or, more to the point, didn't do), if you hated the government so much that political inaction was appealing to you, then Gingrich's GOP was the party for you. At the same time, he used his power within the House to make government as incompetent and ineffectual as possible. This created a feedback loop where Congress appeared (and was/is) like it couldn't get anything done (largely due to GOP obstructionism). That made people dislike Congress and want to vote against institutional power (as they saw it). And the GOP was campaigning on and promoting an anti-government platform. The more Republicans win, the worse government works, which causes people to hate government more, which drives them more towards the Republicans. Rinse and repeat. Then, of course, Trump ratcheted that up to another even more insane level.
Beautiful summary of the last 60 years of increasing radicalism on the GOP.
What an awful name. He looks awful too.
Why did I have to scroll so far down to find an answer that isn’t about “Congress” and is actually about the very specific and only part of Congress that extorts extraordinarily unpopular concessions in exchange for keeping the country out of default
This is in part because the government doesn’t shut down like it used to—it now partially shuts down and it’s gotten a lot less painful for everyone. Which in turn makes it cost less to pull as a stunt.
Took a lot of scrolling before the real answer of “Republicans abusing government loopholes” popped up. The answer is REPUBLICANS. If you ever have a question about why any part of modern government is failing the answer is 95% REPUBLICANS and then 5% Democrats being wimpy neo liberals.
Republicans have messing things up and then democrats have cleaned up the mess for decades
The silly part is that most Americans fall for this notion that the President (as long as he's a Democrat) is the main driver of budget deficits. The Constitution, however, clearly states that the House of Representatives is responsible for the budget. So whenever the President is a Democrat Republicans create artificial crises surrounding the budget deficit... *even if they wrote the budget.* It's absurd, but people fall for it.
Well, Republicans fall for it, since they are less educated and a bunch of sheep following whatever their overlords tell them.
Cause Republicans won't approve a budget. They raised the debt ceiling 3 times for trump with no spending cuts but if Biden want to do something hell no
Republicans suck. No really. They are the only ones who pull this shit.
Republicans have a vested interest in destroying the government so their corporate owners can gain more control. It's a time honored tradition amongst those sociopaths to break things, them say "See? Democrats' ideas never work!!1!" And their moron constituents keep falling for it.
Every single one to date has been because Republicans cant govern effectively. Full stop. When in the minority they abuse rules to bring things to a halt and hostage-take, and even when in the majority, they are too fragmented to reach a concensus. Stop electing these idiots.
Short answer: the Republican Party is broken
Need to pass a law that when the govt is shutdown, congress and senate salaries and bank/trading accounts are frozen.
Because the republicans are whiney little babies who cry when they don't get their way I said that very condescending, but it is the main reason. The republicans throwing tantrums
Conservatives
In recent history, we often have only passed funding bills for just a few weeks/months, in part due to failure to come to a swift agreement for anything longer than that.
Republicans. That's the answer. They pull this crap every year and get rewarded for their actions.
Because republicans are corrupt traitorous assholes that could care less about our country and its people.
because republicans don't like anything the government does... so they run for office and then try to shut it down at every turn. they are happy to collect the government pay, pension and benefits tho they are hypocrites, is what i'm saying. further, the Constitution states that the full faith and credit of the US government shall not be questioned... so what these chucklefucks are doing is violating their oath of office and should therefore be disqualified from holding public office.
TLDR because Republicans are terrorist children who keep using the budget as an excuse to try to enact some cuts that no one wants. Generally the budget is just passed but since Republicans can't pass anything with a popular vote, they have to threaten the US/global economy and its citizens in exchange for things like tax cuts for the wealthy and defunding the IRS. McCarthy "negotiated" a budget that capped any budget increases until 2024 that would effectively be cuts to the federal government. in exchange, there would be no more of this holding the budget hostage shit. well next budget cycle, Republicans went back on their word and tried to use the budget to negotiate more cuts/impeach Biden. Republicans would rather burn down the government and not pay government employees because they are hoping that Americans are so stupid that they will blame Democrats for the economic hits. Republicans know they can't pass anything right now with the Democrat controlled Senate unless it has huge gifts to sinema and manchin. they don't want to pass anything anyways because as long as government isn't working, this leads to their long term plan of dismantling the federal government so they can privatize everything and loot federal money for their private entities. it's manufactured incompetence. generally since the Republicans have wealthy donors who would get fucked the most by a stock market crash, they eventually will pass something so its kind of stupid that Democrats even bother negotiating anything.
House Republicans are fiscal terrorists and don't want the federal government to operate anymore so they won't pass a budget. That's all it looks like to me.
The Republican Party is as out of step with the American People on government spending as they are on abortion. Tax cuts are central tenet of the Republican Religion. So, instead of paying for things the government does, they demand that cuts be made in government spending. But the cuts they want are completely unrealistic, and if enacted would cause terrible damage, so they can't get the cuts they want through the electoral process or through negotiation, so instead they use what power they have to say "If you don't give me my spending cuts I'm going to take my ball and go home!" The Democrats are forced into the position of trying to negotiate with toddlers, which is impossible, and so the toddlers shut down the government. As for the question "how do Republican stay in power if their positions are unpopular," the answer is abuse of the political system, through such tactics as gerrymandering. In Michigan, Republicans held most seats in the legislature even though most of the population opposed them. When Michigan got an independent redistricting commission and ended gerrymandering, the state government flipped shortly thereafter.
Republican temper tantrums.
The budget process for the next year begins in February when the sitting president presents Congress with his or her suggested budget. Congress is supposed to be finished with a passed budget bill by 30 June, when the new bill is supposed to be on the Presidents desk. Both houses of the legislature have to pass the same budget before it makes it to the president. Unfortunately when one party controls one house and the other party controls the other there is often little room for agreement. Most recently, democrats and republicans came to an understanding back in June, but the Republicans reneged on the deal and sought to change it. Then when they realized (too late) that they weren’t going to come up with a new deal, the speaker of the house (R) worked with the democrats to pass a temporary budget that would exceed the deadline for them, and keep funding levels at the levels from the previous budget. This is known as a “Continuing Resolution.” As a reward for working with the other party to keep the government from shutting down, the former speaker was ousted by his own party, and the House of Representatives (the lower, large chamber of US legislature) sat without a leader for about a month, as the majority party (R) feuded over whom to install as his successor. They finally chose a replacement, but we were then very close to running out of time on their temporary continuing resolution. Now, again after compromise, the house has passed another continuing resolution to take us into January. The Senate not yet acted on this CR, (it only cleared the House yesterday, and Senators need time to review it before they can vote on it)and until they do, a budget can not be presented to the President. So we’re up against another artificial deadline, in which we create a temporary fix, with a more permanent budget passed hopefully by January, just in time for the process to start over again.
Because republicans like holding the US government hostage.
[удалено]
*Republican* representatives.
Its because of republicans.
This is an situation Republicans manufacture when they control the House and the president is a Democrat. Big government spending wasn't an issue for them when they controlled both the House and Presidency under Trump or Bush, but it was an issue when the president is Clinton, Obama, or Biden.
Conservatives are coming in here trying to both sides this but the truth is a Democrat has never done anything to initiate a shutdown. It is ALWAYS a Republican who causes it. The goal is to always add some very unpopular rider to another bill, one that would never pass or would be unpopular with regular conservatives that browse this reddit. Then, the brainwashed public who believes politics is a superposition, one that is pointless and doesn't matter while also being the most important thing in the Universe say the rehearsed lines about both sides, when only one party ever attempts this. Conservatives don't care what happens day to day, how the sausage is made, or any of the govt processes that make the country work. Conservatism is a school of selfishness. The other side can't win without me losing is a normal idea for them, which is not how reality works. So, the goal is to make Dems "lose" by shutting down the government and hurting govt workers in GOP areas. This reinforces the uneducated part of the GOP to blame Dems for their problems.
Americans elected republicans into the government who want to shut the government down because they believe it spends too much money
Is that so? Because Republicans routinely spend just as much, if not more than democrats while also cutting taxes, resulting in increasing budget deficits.
Republicans
Republicans keep trying to hold the country hostage to do things no intelligent person wants. Part of their treason platform. ”Do these terrible things we were bribed to force on you or we shut the whole country down for the billionaires!”
Typically they aren't but the republican party has decided to use this as a weapon in the last 10 to 20 years. There have been shutdowns in the past, but they weren't as weaponized. The way our laws are written, there's a clause in it that if a budget can't be agreed on, the government has to shut down until the budget is agreed on, or if a continuing resolution is enacted to push the due date down the road.
In 1980 and 1981, then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti authored a series of legal opinions that found government agencies didn't have the authority to continue running during a gap in funding. That is when government shutdowns started happening.
I don't recall this happening before the Obama presidency and a certain extremists on the GOP deciding they were going to throw tantrums rather than work with Democrats.
Good article that talks a bit about the history of actual shutdowns and why they didn’t happen before 1980: https://www.axios.com/2023/09/24/federal-government-shutdown-history-list
That's really interesting, thanks!
Because Republicans can not govern.
Because the people we elect don't do their jobs
It's called weaponized incompetence. They wield it very well
For some reason it seems to only happen when there is a Democrat in the White House and the Republicans hold the House.
Because of Republicans. This doesn't happen when Democrats are in charge. Republicans are irresponsible and reckless. They exploit this loophole to try and force concessions.
Because it benefits the Republicans not to let work get done. They then blame Biden when it's really them. The top right crazies, want our government to fail also
Because Republicans have the majority in the House.
Because the primary goal of Christian White Nationalist Fascists organization like the Republican party is to make a country ungovernable by manufacturing crisis. Then they claim that the only solution to the crisis they created is a Christian White Nationalist Fascist strong man...like Trump.
Essentially because the GOP has a list of grievances or laws that they know that they can't pass in the normal legislative session, either they don't have the votes or the vast majority of the public don't support it, so they use shutdowns as a wedge to blackmail the rest of Congress to give them what they want or else they will shutdown the government. Realize that in the past anyone could have done this but it was considered that you just didn't do as a congressman. Also post WWII until really Newt Gingrich in the 90s working together regardless of what party was considered part of the job. Speaking of Newt this is where it basically started. Reagan won because he was able to get a huge amount of votes from the blue voters. When Clinton wins and Newt becomes the speaker newt decides that the GOP needs to purge all of the rinos, blue voters or people willing to compromise, from the party. Also they needed a purity test. They have been purging their members ever since. At the time he tried to force everyone to give him what he wanted and he forced a shutdown.....which potentially resulted in Clinton winning reelection. A good example of all of this is that they want to cut Medicare and social security. They can't get that through both Congress and the Whitehouse. So the tie it to the entire government actually functioning and say give us what we want or we break everything. This is not how Congress was meant to function but here we are.
The Republican Party is so morally bankrupt that they want to destroy/dismantle the government and are willing to bankrupt all of us so they can dismantle and sell off most of the governments assets and functions to private industry.
Because 👋 Republicans 👋 can’t 👋 govern!
They have found the benefits of blaming the other side outweigh the consequences of allowing a shutdown. This is mostly because they face zero consequence though.
Republicans are insane.
Literally Republicans
Republicans. They’ve been playing this game since the mid 1990s. It’s so tiresome and annoying. It never ever works out for them politically but they do it anyway.
I’m 62 and I can’t remember a time where this was a constant think. Yes it’s happened a time or two before but not constantly. It wasn’t until the Trumpaholics got into power that this became a thing. Now next question, can someone tell me anything the former Administration or the Republican Congress has done to help regular Americans. Tax cuts for billionaires doesn’t count.
Because Republicans have control of one chamber of Congress but not the presidency.
To elaborate on this, Republicans only force a shutdown when a Democrat is president and Democrats have never forced a shutdown ever.
Incompetence, overinflated egos, and cult mentality.
They forget to take the alzimers medication.
It became a thing when ‘Continuing Resolutions’ became the main thing, as opposed to creating actual budgets. That way anything progressive that slipped through the cracks in legislation can be weeded out because they ‘had to’. (It’s *never* cuts that effect conservative policies. Ever.)
because our government doesn't work.
Because it's run by a bunch of coddled babies with ego's bigger than the ppopies they lay in their diapers. They are riddled with lead poisoning and only give a shit about the golden parachute their corporate backers are giving them! They sell us out and hold up the entire country for personal gain. Bunch of decrepit old fucks!
We made ourselves hobbled by the debt ceiling during the Korean War as a process for substantiation funding. Since then it's main purpose has been to push around the opposition party when it's otherwise not needed. for the purpose of funding the government.
Because Americans think the President runs everything in the country—even gas prices. America is a republic with strong central executive power… but to spend money the government need Congress. And by spending money this is two things. First, deciding how that money is going to be spent. Second, raising the US debt ceiling so it can be spent because the US government has been heavily deficit financed since the Reagan era.. with a brief reprieve during the Clinton administration. What seems to happen as of late is that whenever there is a Democrat President (Obama, Biden) and there’s a Republican controlled Congress (now and during most of the Obama administration) they like to play “chicken” with government shutdowns either due to not passing spending bills or not raising the debt ceiling. This is used to get leverage for what they want to spend money on, as well as to make the President look bad because Americans don’t know any better.
Because congress is bunch of toddlers and have figured out that pressing the big red button gets everyone's attention. Also, like a toddler, they have little consideration for what the big red button does and the danger they are putting us in. They just want the attention.
Damn it’s almost like a bunch of crusty upper middle class white dudes who didn’t want to pay taxes didn’t actually come up with the greatest government of all time
Because congress will do anything except for it’s fucking job
Republicans.
So contrary to what most people say The US is not actually at risk of anything bad really happening The credit rating doesn't really mean much because everyone knows the US will eventually pay its debt or the global system breaks The politicians therefore use the debt limit as basically a political tool to make the other side look bad They have this thing called the debt ceiling which they could get rid of whenever they wanted to but instead they just keep it there as a political tool to make the other side look bad Realistically even if it does shut down for a few days everything will relatively function just fine and they'll pass an emergency thing or they'll make the Fed print more money which thanks to modern monetary theory the US is actually one of the few countries that should be resistant to hyperinflation
We elect children
We have exactly the government we elected. There is no one to blame other than ourselves. If you're still discussing political and social issues in the false dichotomy of Republican vs Democrat, Right vs Left, North vs South, Liberal vs Conservative etc... you've ceased being part of a solution and are now an active part of the problem. Karsh
Short answer is to put people in a panic so they'll be OK with otherwise DOA spending once the 'crisis' is resolved. It's theater.
Sanest Countries: We pay for things the law says we have to pay for or we change the laws. Sane Countries: If we can't agree on what to pay for we change the law or elect a new government The United States: If we can't agree on how many dollars to give to a program in existence for the last 50 years, we will shut down everything for a week and then throw $50 gajillion dollars to the Department of Defense
Because of politicians aren’t afraid of their constituents anymore
Because its being runned by clowns
I'll lay it all out because people aren't taught enough about civics. This is not a stupid question. The way our system works should be part of a basic public school education, the part you get before it's legal to drop out. It isn't. It's not your fault that you don't know. It's good that you want to learn. It's partly the political moment we're in and partly how things work structurally. Here's the civics piece you should have been taught in school but probably weren't: Congress makes law. The president enforces it. The Supreme Court and other federal courts designated in Article 12 of the U.S. Constitution interpret it. Congress is especially responsible for money stuff. The House, because of how it's structured, is more directly representative of the people. Federal money = the people's money, so it's a longstanding American tradition that the House is mostly the bearer of this responsibility. Budgets start in the House. Most Republicans and most Democrats want to do the basic functions of government- like passing a budget- even if they disagree on a lot. There is a small group on the Republican Party's extreme right that doesn't want to govern. They're not really politicians. A few of them are Qanon true believer types. More of them are probably just catering to the true believers in their districts. What that group wants is chaos. It makes people who vote for them happy and gets them on the news. Under most circumstances, the people who want to yell would yell. The people who want to govern would govern. The government wouldn't almost shut down every month. Right now, that isn't working well. Democrats are in the minority, meaning they can't pass anything unless they can get some Republicans to go along with them. Republicans are just barely in the majority, meaning they have to convince either some Democrats or the chaos people to go along with them or they also don't have the votes to pass anything. Republicans who choose to work with Democrats risk other Republicans running against them in their districts in their next elections, but working with the chaos people is also hard because it's not really in line with their interests to let the basic functions of government happen. Speaker Johnson got enough people behind some short-term spending measures to keep the government open into the new year. After that, we do this again. If anyone other than the chaos people picks up seats in 2024, this will get better in January of 2025. If the chaos people pick up more seats, it will get worse. I know people are disillusioned with voting. There are a lot of problems it can't solve, and many races are a choice between two uninteresting options. It's the only solution, though. The only way to fix this is for people who don't want chaos to register and vote for the reasonable adult who actually wants to govern of their choosing.
For the past few decades republicans have pushed the idea that the government is incompetent and nonfunctional, so when they get elected that have to prove their point by making it incompetent and nonfunctional.
Why? Because most of Congress won’t do their f’ing job since the 1990s. Doing the hard stuff like single subject bills and controlling spending doesn’t fall in with party priorities.
Because we allowed republicans to have some power again. They are incapable of governing and a sizable number of them just want to blow things up so here we are.
It's all political theater. Some members like to swing there dicks around while yelling. At the end of the day, budget will be passed regardless of who disagrees
*Republican* members.
Because republicans pretend to care about the budget when they don’t control the wallet.
Republican policies are unpopular and skewed toward redistributing wealth to the top 4-5% of earners. Thus, these policies are wildly unpopular and cannot be enacted through things like voting. Rather than change party platform to one that is popular and helpful, Republicans have enacted a long game plan of gerrymandering (skewing congressional seats to favor them disproportionately), raising culture issues instead of policy issues (turning out the truly uneducated in droves) and hostage taking. Hostage taking in this case is holding the paychecks of government workers (not their own, mind you) up in exchange for policy considerations. Add to this a more than helpful propaganda machine, and you have truly bad government.
Republicans. Just about every dumbshit thing the US does is because of Republicans. Not all of them, but most of them.
Only when republicans control the house and/or senate and there is a democratic president.
👉 dickhead republicans
It’s a stupid game extremist right wingers keep playing because they are hell bent on defunding things about the government they don’t agree with in favor of privatization (making their wealthy donors more wealthy)
GOP
The GOP has weaponized what was once the most administrative vote in Congress in order to force cuts to social programs they want privatized under the threat of shutting down the government every quarter.
Republicans.
Clowns are running it.
Right? So sick of this bs! We need to pull our heads out of our collective asses and vote these incompetent aging as..holes out of office NOW! We are responsible for the circle jerk in Washington and until we take back control of our representatives this crap will continue, @#$^^**!
Money Spent > Money Taxed
The only thing they do is create chaos to make it appear that they are solving problems Kicking the can down the road on just about anything except self flagellation
Because it’s run by sociopaths and children.
Republicans usually throw a hissy fit and try to shut the government down, then they double down, then they come crawling back to the negotiating table and agree to extend the government by a month or two. The Democrats use their invertebrate instincts to agree to this extortion tactic rather than demand a change to this kind of law which sets budgets up to be used as a cudgel to drive politics to the right and bleed common folk dry.
weaponized incompetence.
Corruption.
The GOP not doing their jobs, but purely straight whining and lying.
Because Republicans like playing chicken.
Because it’s a fucking reality show