A Historical Perspective of Shutdowns

Not only is it wholly wrong to pretend that the House is expected to acquiesce to the fiscal and legislative demands of the president simply because he won the last election, but it is dangerous — just one more step on the road to the imperial polity that the American system of separated powers was contrived to prevent.

As my colleague Andrew Stiles notes today, during the supposedly bipartisan wonder years of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill — which are typically rolled out by revisionists to demonstrate what can happen if we all just “work together” — the government shut down no fewer than eight times, mostly at O’Neill’s insistence. Likewise, during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, which are fondly remembered as a time of solid economic growth and bipartisan achievement, the government was sent home twice — on both occasions after Clinton rejected the budget.

Overall, the statistics might surprise: Of the 17 shutdowns in America’s history, Democrats controlled the House during 15 and had charge of both chambers during eight. Five shutdowns happened under unified government! This makes sense. Government shutdowns are caused by legitimate and welcome disagreement between equal branches. They are certainly more likely to happen in divided government, but it is not a prerequisite.

What stands out here is not the shutdown itself, but the president and Harry Reid’s public refusal even to engage with Republicans. As Matthews documents, most budget gaps are resolved by the participants’ compromising. The quaint notion that there is no obligation to come to a negotiated agreement because one branch of government “won” would be almost certainly regarded as somewhat odd not only by the architects of America’s constitutional order but by the major players in the previous few decades. Eleven shutdowns ended with a deal, five were resolved with an agreement temporarily to fund the government while debate continued, and one ended with Congress overriding a presidential veto. Stand firm if you want, Mr. President, but the history is against you here.

Obamacare is an allegedly “deficit-reducing” measure that was passed via the budget-reconciliation process, was rewritten by the Supreme Court as a tax, and will increase the federal budget by up to 10 percent. The initial House plan here, remember, was not to repeal, but to defund the law — a clear-cut budgetary project if anything is. If defunding things as part of fiscal negotiations is beyond the pale, then the president might explain why the ninth shutdown, for example, ended with the Democratic House’s managing to defund a defense program that included both medium-range and intercontinental missiles, and why it was appropriate for Congress to shut down the government over the funding of abortion as it did five times. Funnily enough, tempting as it must have been, during none of these disputes did the participants run around shouting “It’s the Law!”