United States

The 2013 government shutdown

After an October 1 deadline passed with the House and Senate failing to agree on a continuing resolution bill for the federal budget, the federal government partially shut down for the first time in 17 years, furloughing several hundred thousand federal employees and closing numerous government offices as well as national parks and other public lands. For weeks, most congressional Republicans, led by those associated with the Tea Party movement, had sought to include in the continuing resolution a one-year delay in funding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; referred to by both parties as Obamacare), many of the provisions of which took effect on October 1. At the final hour the House Republican majority continued to refuse to rescind that requirement, while the Senate Democratic majority was steadfast in its rejection of it, forcing the government shutdown. On October 16—with political brinkmanship again having brought the government to the limit of the national debt ceiling and with the United States facing the possibility of a default that some feared might spark a global economic crisis—moderate Republicans voted with Democrats in both houses of Congress to pass a bill that fully reopened the government by funding it through January 15, 2014, extended national borrowing until February 7, and set up a committee tasked with arriving at longer-term budgetary solutions. The only change to Obamacare contained in the bill was a minor alteration to the procedures for verifying incomes for some people obtaining subsidized insurance.