United States government shutdown of 2013

Timeline of events

September 20, 2013 (2013-09-20): House passes appropriations bill H.J.Res 59, a continuing resolution that would fund the government until December 15, 2013. The bill included a controversial amendment that would defund the ACA. September 27, 2013 (2013-09-27): Senate amends H.J.Res. 59, removing the House amendment that would defund the ACA. This is commonly referred to as a clean continuing resolution. September 29, 2013 (2013-09-29): House amends H.J.Res. 59 a second time to add another amendment to defund the ACA. President Obama threatens veto September 30, 2013 (2013-09-30): Senate amends H.J.Res. 59 again to remove the defunding amendment and return to a clean continuing resolution. House Speaker refuses to bring amended bill to vote. House passes H.Res.368 so only the Majority leader or his designee can bring H.J.Res.59 to a vote. October 1, 2013 (2013-10-01): Government shuts down October 2, 2013 (2013-10-02): Obama meets with Republican and Democratic leaders, but no agreement is reached. House begins passing "mini" appropriations bills. Senate Majority Leader refuses to bring "mini" bills to vote October 9, 2013 (2013-10-09): President Obama invites the entire Congress to meet with him about the government shutdown and upcoming debt ceiling. Separate meetings for House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and Senate Republicans were suggested. The House leadership responded that they would send 18 members to meet with Obama. October 16, 2013 (2013-10-16): Congress plans last-minute votes to avert default. The plan would allow the U.S to continue borrowing until February 7. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said he would allow the deeply divided House to vote on the Senate plan to move the debt limit and a government reopening. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 81 to 18. It passed in the House a few hours later, 285 for and 144 against. President Obama signed the bill into law at 12:30am on October 17, effectively ending the shutdown and debt ceiling crisis.

From October 1 through 16, 2013, the United States federal government entered a shutdown and curtailed most routine operations because neither legislation appropriating funds for fiscal year 2014 nor a continuing resolution for the interim authorization of appropriations for fiscal year 2014 was enacted in time. Regular government operations resumed October 17 after an interim appropriations bill was signed into law.

During the shutdown, approximately 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed, and another 1.3 million were required to report to work without known payment dates. Only those government services deemed "excepted" under the Antideficiency Act were continued; and only those employees deemed "excepted" continued to report to work. The previous U.S. federal government shutdown was in 1995–96. The 16-day-long shutdown of October 2013 was the third-longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after the 18-day shutdown in 1978 and the 21-day 1995–96 shutdown.

A "funding-gap" was created when the two chambers of Congress failed to agree to an appropriations continuing resolution. The Republican-led House of Representatives, in part encouraged by conservative senators such as Ted Cruz and conservative groups such as Heritage Action, offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare"). The Democratic-led Senate passed several amended continuing resolutions for maintaining funding at then-current sequestration levels with no additional conditions. Political fights over this and other issues between the House on one side and President Barack Obama and the Senate on the other led to a budget impasse which threatened massive disruption.

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