NPR - "A Short History Of Government Shutdowns" - Cruz Is Wrong Again

[TomCADem]

Republicans have been on the news blowing off the significance of their actions suggesting that it was common place to have a budgetary impasse. Of course, they are leaving out the fact that before the federal government continued to operate until the US Attorney General issued an opinion that the Federal Government could not operate without a Congressionally approved and appropriated budget. After that opinion, there was not a significant shutdown until, you guessed it, Newt Gingrich in 1995 and 1996, and now, 2013. Thus, Ted Cruz's claim that budgetary impasses were common place leaves out a lot.

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/227292952/a-short-history-of-government-shutdowns

"In the '60s and '70s down until 1980, it was not taken that seriously at all," says Charles Tiefer, a former legal adviser to the House of Representatives, who now teaches at the University of Baltimore Law School. In the old days, he says, when lawmakers reached a budget stalemate, the federal workforce just went about its business.

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That easygoing attitude changed during the last year of President Jimmy Carter's administration. That's when Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued a legal opinion saying government work cannot go on until Congress agrees to pay for it.

"They used an obscure statute to say that if any work continued in an agency where there wasn't money, the employees were behaving like illegal volunteers," says Tiefer. "So they not only could shut off the lights and leave, they were obliged to shut off the lights and leave."

* * *
In the years leading up to Civiletti's opinion, budget standoffs lasting a week or more were commonplace. But after the opinion, no standoff lasted more than three days until the epic government shutdowns of 1995.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for the truth. n/t

-Laelth