Government Shutdown

Congress Averts Shutdown, Passes a Five Month $1.1 Trillion Spending Package

By Eric Pianin

GOP and Democratic negotiators struck a final deal over the weekend for a roughly $1.1 trillion spending package to carry the government through the remainder of the fiscal year – a plan that...
Renewed Fight Over Obamacare Could Prompt Government Shutdown

By Eric Pianin

The bitter partisan warfare over health care reform intensified on Thursday when congressional Democrats threatened to shut down the government this weekend if House Republicans try to move forward...
12 Reasons Another Government Shutdown Would Hurt the Country

By Eric Pianin

The last time the federal government was shut down nearly four years ago, hundreds of adults and children were temporarily denied access to National Institutes of Health (NIH) cancer clinical trials...
Can Trump’s Wall Really Pay for Itself Over 10 Years?

By Rob Garver

The original plan for President Trump’s border wall, repeated ad nauseam on the campaign trail, was that it would be paid for by Mexico. On Sunday, though, Attorney General Jeff Sessions floated a...
Trump Pushes Congress to the Wall to Avoid a Government Shutdown

By Rob Garver

The already-complicated effort to avert a government shutdown on April 29 is taking on another layer of complexity, with the White House demanding that any spending measure that funds the federal...

Why You Might Not Get Your Tax Refund on Time This Year

By Rob Garver

Every year, millions of Americans anxiously await the annual infusion of cash from the Internal Revenue Service when it pays back excess withholding from the previous year. However, according to the...
After Their Break, Congress Will Have 4 Days to Avoid a Shutdown

By Eric Pianin and Rob Garver

When members of the House of Representatives return to Washington from a nearly three-week break at the end of the month, they will have left themselves just four legislative days to come to some...
Trump Hands Democrats Another Reason to Shut Down the Government

By Rob Garver

With representatives of both major parties making optimistic noises about their ability to come together on a bill that would allow the government to remain open once the current temporary spending...
The Clock Is Ticking on a Government Shutdown: 5 Things You Need to Know

By Rob Garver

As Congress prepares to leave town for another break, the Senate has been focused on the effort to confirm (or deny) Neil Gorsuch as a justice of the Supreme Court. The GOP House is desperate to show...
Why Another Government Shutdown Is Suddenly in the Cards

By Rob Garver

The clock is already ticking on the Trump administration and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s next showdown with recalcitrant Republican lawmakers.

Shutdown Lowdown: Sizing Up the Federal Furloughs

By Yuval Rosenberg

What does it mean to have hundreds of thousands of federal workers on unpaid leave?
Tea Party Picks Principle over Fiscal Peril

By Maureen Mackey, The Fiscal Times

Even if we get to the brink of default on our government debt, members of the Tea Party say the current budget standoff is more about standing tough against Obamacare and its burdensome costs. Their...
The Deep-Seated Roots of Divisive U.S. Politics

By Dan Balz, The Washington Post

The government shutdown did not happen by accident. It is the latest manifestation — an extreme one by any measure — of divisions long in the making and now deeply embedded in the country’s politics...
GOP Funders Tighten the Purse Strings over Shutdown

By Josh Boak, The Fiscal Times

House Speaker John Boehner has trusted the Tea Partiers in Congress enough to shut down the government … but GOP congressional leaders haven’t trusted them with campaign donations. One of the big...
Defense Recalls Most Furloughed Civilian Workers

By Phil Stewart and Thomas Ferraro, Reuters

The Pentagon said on Saturday it would recall most of the roughly 400,000 civilian Defense Department employees sent home during the government shutdown, in a move that could greatly lessen the...

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