Ask the Experts : What factors can cause a government to shut down?
Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown Monday after passing a last-minute spending deal, an act that will provide funding for the federal government until Nov. 18. Threat of a shutdown raised much concern throughout the past week, as Washington, D.C., citizens worried about the effects of federal budget negotiations on the district’s daily operations.
Congress and the White House also agreed on an overall spending amount for the year 2012, which would roughly be split between domestic and defense apportionments. Decisions on how much to spend on each still remain unresolved, and will be further debated. Money will also be set aside for disaster spending.
The idea of a government shutdown is not unfamiliar among D.C. residents, who experienced similar threats earlier this year when Congress nearly missed its April 7 deadline. Due to the district’s budget depending on government approval, federal government shutdown would cause the suspension of several services, from trash collection to basic program funding.
The Daily Orange asked the experts: What factors can cause a government to shut down?
‘Governments shut down when they have no money to pay their bills, write salary checks for their employees and conduct various businesses. In democratic countries like ours this happens when the body empowered to authorize expenditures, and to set debt limits, fails either to authorize expenditures or to raise those debt limits.
Recently Congress has nearly failed to do one or the other of these things – because of narrowly partisan, or dogmatic ideological positions.’
Ralph Ketcham
Political science professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
‘There are many specific factors that might cause the U.S. federal government to shut down, but generally these situations occur when members of Congress and the president cannot agree on budget issues, which can cause funding to be cut off. This is especially likely under the conditions that prevail today: We have what is called ‘divided government,’ when one party controls the presidency and the other controls one or both houses of Congress, and the overall political environment is polarized along partisan lines, which makes compromise difficult.’
Matthew Guardino
Political science professor at the Maxwell School
Published on September 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Contact Marwa: meltagou@syr.edu | @marwaeltagouri
