The government shutdown is now history. In the annals of government dysfunction, it joins 20 other funding lapses that have unfolded since the 1970s (when modern budgeting began).
It’s possible to distill a few observations from this sad history, and maybe even a lesson or two. That might prove useful since the next opportunity for a shutdown is just over two months away.
Shutdowns Are Not All the Same
Shutdowns come in a variety of flavors. Over the past 48 years, some have been short, lasting just a day or two. Others have been long, dragging on for weeks. Ten shutdowns have lasted at least four business days, causing significant disruption. As has been widely reported — and even more widely experienced by the long-suffering American public — the 2025 shutdown was the longest on record.
Shutdowns have also differed in scope and severity. Some have been complete, closing every nonessential function of the federal government (including some that seem essential but aren’t classified that way). Others have been partial because they occurred in the middle of the congressional appropriations process; when a shutdown starts after Congress has already passed some of its 12 annual spending bills, the funding lapse only halts nonessential services in unfunded agencies.
On a related note, the variable scope and duration of government shutdowns create a semantic problem. “Shutdown” and “funding lapse” seem like synonyms, but they aren’t. As the Congressional Research Service has pointed out:
“Although a shutdown may be the result of a funding gap, the two events should be distinguished. This is because a funding gap may result in a total shutdown of all affected projects or activities in some instances but not others. For example, when funding gaps are of a short duration, agencies may not have enough time to complete a shutdown of affected projects and activities before funding is restored. In addition, the Office of Management and Budget has previously indicated that a shutdown of agency operations within the first day of the funding gap may be postponed if a resolution appears to be imminent.”
Shutdowns Weren’t Really a Thing Until 1980
Until 1980, funding lapses did not trigger shutdowns. As the House points out on its history website: “Government agencies would often continue to operate during a lapse in appropriations, with the expectation that funding would be provided in the future.” To be sure, some agencies curtailed operations during these early funding lapses. But for the most part, the government kept governing.
This arrangement was casual and convenient — but also illegal, according to U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. President Jimmy Carter asked Civiletti for his opinion on government operations during a funding lapse. Civiletti responded with a pair of letters, the first sent in April 1980 and the second in January 1981. In those letters, Civiletti concluded that the Antideficiency Act barred most government activity during a funding lapse. He wrote:
“It is my opinion that, during periods of ‘lapsed appropriations,’ no funds may be expended except as necessary to bring about the orderly termination of an agency’s functions, and that the obligation or expenditure of funds for any purpose not otherwise authorized by law would be a violation of the Antideficiency Act.”
In some form, the Antideficiency Act dates to 1870, when Congress first tried to stop the executive branch from spending money it didn’t have. It was later revised several times, reaching its modern form in the 1950s. In broad strokes, the act “prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation, and from accepting voluntary services,” explains the Government Accountability Office. (When I visited the GAO website that provides this explanation, it featured a warning that the page would be untended for the duration of the shutdown, which seemed nicely illustrative.)
Civiletti concluded that as a practical matter, federal agencies had to stop spending money during a funding lapse. That included salaries for government personnel, and his opinion also barred agencies from accepting voluntary services from government employees. Civiletti made room for exceptions, including situations “involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,” but he concluded that a funding lapse generally required a broad-ranging shutdown of unfunded government operations.
Civiletti’s interpretation of the Antideficiency Act has shaped the federal response to funding lapses for the last 45 years. And no one is more surprised than Civiletti himself. “I couldn’t have ever imagined these shutdowns would last this long of a time and would be used as a political gambit,” he told The Washington Post in 2019. When he drafted the letters, Civiletti thought he was providing a “direct opinion on a fairly narrow subject.” The letters have been used, he said, “in ways that were not imagined at the time.”
Shutdowns Used to Be Shorter
Historically, funding gaps tended to be short. The rise of the multiweek, high-stakes shutdown is a relatively recent phenomenon.
During the Ronald Reagan years, funding gaps were frequent but brief; the longest was just three days. Of the eight lapses that occurred between 1981 and 1988, only four triggered shutdown procedures. Some of these shutdowns, moreover, did not emerge from major policy disputes. A one-day shutdown in 1982 occurred because members of Congress were busy with social events, including a White House barbecue and a fundraising dinner.
By the mid-1990s, however, shutdowns were getting serious — and highly ideological. It’s fair to say that the nature of shutdown politics changed when President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich faced off in an epic battle.
In the Republican-wave election of 1994, Republicans won control of both the House and Senate. Gingrich and his new band of GOP leaders in the House were determined to roll back many of Clinton’s signature policies, including some tax increases. Bitter conflict with the White House soon led to a pair of extended, nearly back-to-back shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996. The first forced the furlough of an estimated 800,000 federal workers, according to the CRS; the second triggered a furlough for 280,000 executive branch employees. Together, these two shutdowns lasted for a total of 26 days.
Policymakers took a long break from shutdowns after the 1995-1996 episode, with both sides wary of the politics. But in 2013, a new shutdown — triggered by another bitter conflict, this time over funding for the Affordable Care Act — lasted for 16 days and forced 800,000 federal employees off the job. In 2018 another fight over funding for President Trump’s border wall triggered another extended shutdown — the longest on record to that point, lasting 35 days.
The Blame Game Is Complicated
In shutdown politics, blame matters. Shutdowns cause a lot of pain and inconvenience, much of it broadly shared. During the most recent shutdown, people receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program suffered some of the worst consequences. But less dire problems afflicted an even larger swath of the voting public — just ask anyone who tried to navigate an airport last month.
Still, it’s hard to predict where blame will land. Historically, the public has assigned most of the responsibility for a shutdown to the party that seems in control. In divided government, that can be confusing, but when one party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, things are simpler.
Of course, the filibuster complicates the picture; in the Senate, a minority party can still bring things to a halt, raising questions about who controls the chamber. But as a practical matter, it’s not clear that voters pay much attention to parliamentary procedure; the media reports every day that Republicans hold all the levers of power, and voters seem to take that at face value — mostly.
Polls during the 2025 shutdown produced a split decision about the funding lapse. In a recent AP-NORC poll, 58 percent of Americans assigned Trump and his congressional allies “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the shutdown; 54 percent assigned the same level of responsibility to Democrats.
That’s pretty close. But a more careful look shows Democrats winning the battle for public opinion, albeit still narrowly. Roughly half of Americans said Trump deserved the very highest amount of responsibility (“a great deal”), while just 40 percent said the same of Democrats.
An NBC poll found similar results. Conducted in the last week of October, the survey found a combined 52 percent of voters blamed either Trump or congressional Republicans for the shutdown; 42 percent blamed Democrats in Congress, and 4 percent blamed everyone involved.
Democrats might be content with those results, but NBC flagged a problem: The share of voters blaming Democrats was higher than during any of the past shutdowns. “I think the default for people is that it’s a Republican effort in terms of who gets the blame,” observed Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster who conducted the NBC survey in conjunction with a Democratic colleague. “We’ve had 30 years of shutdowns, and this is the highest number of blaming Democrats. So both things can be true at the same time.”
In a 2023 analysis, Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight.com also concluded that voters tend to blame Republicans for shutdowns. “Since 2010 at least, the public has always blamed and soured on the GOP more than Democrats in the wake of these standoffs,” he wrote. But Rakich also tried to lower the stakes. “The political effects of these crises are short-lived,” he noted. “There’s always another news cycle that replaces it.”
Another FiveThirtyEight.com analyst reached the same conclusion in 2018. “Prior shutdowns haven’t had long-term electoral implications,” wrote Harry Enten. Even the contentious standoffs of the 1990s faded from the scene pretty quickly. Republicans recovered their lost ground on the generic ballot within a month of the shutdown’s end. And in the 1996 elections, they retained their House and Senate majorities. Clinton also recovered his lost support and went on to win easy reelection in 1996.
Two Thoughts for the Future
The next chance for a shutdown is right around the corner, probably in late January 2026. So as we exit this crisis and prepare for the next, what lessons can we draw from the history of government shutdowns?
First, the political stakes are probably lower than they seem. Shutdowns are dramatic, inconvenient, and expensive. And they can be very hard on vulnerable populations, like people dependent on federal food assistance programs.
But as political factors, shutdowns probably don’t matter too much. Over the short term, the blame game seems important, even when the score is fairly close. But it’s not clear that the game is worth the candle; short-term victories — and defeats — don’t seem to have any lasting impact at the ballot box.
Still, that doesn’t mean shutdowns are unimportant. Which brings me to my second lesson. Substantive issues don’t always matter in politics; vibes explain a lot. But the salience of certain issues can be important in shaping those vibes — and the voters that they influence.
In the recent shutdown, ACA premium support tax credits were the big substantive issue. And Democrats can point to big numbers when voters are asked about the credits: Roughly three-quarters of Americans support their extension.
That broad support may not convince Republicans to agree to an extension when they take a vote on the issue later this year (as promised in the bipartisan agreement ending the shutdown). But Democrats can still benefit from the increased salience of the credits, especially when health insurance sticker shock takes center stage in the weeks and months to come.