Today, Americans woke up to a federal government that has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to serve its function. The shutdown, which will furlough about one million federal employees, is the first of its kind in nearly two decades. Beyond the furloughs, programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, national parks and museums, and organizations like NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Institutes of Health will cease operation almost immediately, and an extended government shutdown could indefinitely shutter countless more.
This crisis, which seems to have played out time and time again during the Obama presidency, has been a long time in the making. Here’s how we got here:
- August 2011: In response to the debt ceiling crisis, Congress passes the Budget Control Act of 2011. In addition to raising the federal debt ceiling, the compromise creates the so-called “super committee” to consider debt reduction and establishes a sequestration mechanism to slash government spending should the super committee fail to reach an agreement. Several days later, Standard & Poor’s downgrades the United States’ sovereign credit rating.
- November 2011: The supercommittee reports that “[a]fter months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.” The sequester is scheduled to go into effect on January 2, 2013.
- December 2012/January 2013: The Bush-era tax cuts are scheduled to end on January 1, 2013, creating what Fed chair Ben Bernanke calls the “fiscal cliff.” In conjunction with the sequester cuts, the anticipated economic impact is enormous. In last-minute sessions on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, Congress passes the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which delays the sequester until March of 2013.
- March 2013: After all parties fail to reach an agreement that would prevent the sequester, President Obama issues an order putting the cuts, which impact all sectors of the federal government, into effect on March 1 at midnight.
- September 2013: Debate over funding, and later delaying the implementation of, the ACA, results in Congress’ failure to reach an agreement to fund the government’s operations. The Office of Management and Budget issues the order to begin the shutdown at 11:47 p.m. on September 30, 2013. The government shut down on October 1 at midnight, the same day that the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges opened for enrollment.
After more than two years and an election’s worth of kicking the fiscal can, Congress may have reached the end of the road. What (re)solutions may come in the next days and weeks, however, are anyone’s guess.