Selects: How Government Shutdowns Work
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Hi there, friends. It's me, Josh. And for this week's Select, I've chosen our September 2019 episode on government shutdowns. Sadly, this is such a perennial topic, we should re-release it every couple months. It's a good thing to understand so that you can be good and ticked off at your elected officials any time a shutdown happens, because as we learn in this episode, they are totally avoidable. So enjoy, I guess. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan. There's Jerry over there, and this is the podcast. Like I said, in particular, it's the Stuff You Should Know podcast. So if that's not what you're here to listen to, you're in the wrong place. And if you don't want to listen to us talk about government shutdowns, then you're in the wrong place. But who doesn't want to know about government shutdowns?

Yeah, I agree. Educate yourselves. Right. As a matter of fact. Because it's going to happen again soon enough. That's exactly right. That is why I wanted to do this episode. Yeah. Because I've been meaning for us to do this for years now. And every time we do it and it's like, or every time I go to do it,

Say, let's do a government shutdown episode, I think is what I'm trying to say. Sorry, I just drank a Red Bull because I was about to fall over, and now I'm talking really fast. Oh, good Lord. Just give me like 10 minutes. Okay, and you're drinking a Coca-Cola. Well, we don't have Coke Zero here anymore. This is all we have. You want that extra caffeine kick on top of the Red Bull. I think I have just this 12-ounce can. It's not even gone, and I think I've burned a hole in my stomach. Yeah. It's crazy. But delicious. It is delicious. I'll give you that. But Coke Zero is really...

Delicious, too, for being a diet. Cola. At any rate, government shutdowns. You were saying, yeah, every time we go to do this. The government shuts down, so it looks like we're chasing a trend, so we have to wait. Yeah. And I'm like, finally, the time is right. Because it wouldn't be cool to do one in the midst of one? Is that the deal? No, definitely not. Gotcha. No, that's like buying a T-shirt at a concert and then putting that T-shirt on and looking around like, yeah, I know what's up. At the concert? Right. That horrible smell?

That new t-shirt, especially concert t-shirts. They're printed out of, you know, straight chemicals. Out of Buffalo Bill's basement. Made of skin. Man, he's been on my mind a lot. Because of the Eggine episode? Well, because that, and then I just saw on the Movie Crusher's page, someone posted a funny little thing that was a Buffalo Bill...

Tinder profile. It was really funny. I got to see that. And then there was something else from this past weekend. There was a lot of Buffalo Bill happening. He's everywhere. Yeah. Remember we used to send each other that one screenshot? Yeah. That was great. That was back when we shared a cubicle wall. I know, and it was easy enough to do that. Back in the day. Now we have gold-plated Aeron chairs and no walls anywhere. I'd take a regular Aeron.

I think that's what you're sitting in right now. Oh, is it? I'm quite comfy. So anyway, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. We should edit all that other stuff out, don't you think? Or get money from Red Bull, Coca-Cola, and Aeron. You're right. And Buffalo Bill. Right. Or the Buffalo Bills football team. Dang, man. You just really pulled it together with that last one.

So we've been through some shutdowns in our time, Chuck. Sure. In our day. Yeah. As a matter of fact, you'd think based on how...

common they kind of seem. I mean, every few years there's like the federal government, I should say for our fellow listeners outside of the United States. Our government is broken. Right. We're talking about government shutdowns and it's a lot like what it sounds like. I mean, we'll get to the nuts and bolts of it, obviously, but it's basically where the federal government, not state governments, but the federal USA government. Yeah.

Parts of it just stopped functioning. Right. And the reason they stopped functioning is because those agencies, those parts of the federal government have not been funded. And since they haven't been funded by law, by congressional act from years back—

They are not allowed to pay workers any longer. They're not even allowed to accept volunteer work from their workers. So with no workers, that means the agency shuts down. And that's a government shutdown. That's what we're talking about. Literally parts of the government shut down. Yeah, and again, we will get into all the nuts and bolts, but it shuts down because of funding gaps. And those funding gaps happen almost always because of

entrenched politics. Yeah, it's two sides playing chicken over the budget. Right. And when the government shutdown happens, neither side blinked. Right. And it's also very important to point out that a big part of government shutdowns is trying to get the other side to

Maybe not accept blame because no one ever does it seems like. But at least the perception in the general media that this person or this side is the one to blame. Yeah, and more often than not, public polling shows that it's Congress that almost always takes the blame. Oh, really? Until this last one, it was...

Always Congress. Right. No matter what, which is funny that they would try to pull this off because it's so politically risky. Yeah. Because it's so damaging. Right. On an individual level among like federal employees or just average Americans, but also on a national level. Yeah, our economy takes a huge hit. Huge hit that we just never regain. All right. That's a great setup. I think so too.

So, Chuck, to start, I think we should talk about how money moves around the federal government, don't you? Yeah, and this is – again, if you live outside the country and even if you live in the United States –

You may not understand what power of the purse means, but in the United States and in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7. Yeah, not even the Bill of Rights, like the Constitution. Yeah. Like this was one of the first things they thought about. It was Congress who was granted control over the money. So the president can't just –

fund something. The Senate can't just fund something. Everything has to be agreed on and they can't spend a dime without Congress's express approval through this process we're going to get into called appropriations. Right. And so in the Constitution, it just said that Congress is the one that approves all money. Everything comes through Congress, right? Yeah, we should read that though because it does have one funny line. You go ahead. From the Constitution, no money shall be drawn from the treasury until

but in consequence of the appropriations made by law, so far so good, and a regular statement of account of receipts and expenditures of all money shall be published from time to time. It's very nonspecific. Whenever you get to it. Why not like, you know, in November of every year? I honestly don't know. Because, I mean, from time to time makes it seem unimportant. It makes it seem...

What's the word when you don't have to do something? It makes it seem non-mandatory. Yeah, optional. Optional. Sure. That's the word. I know you so well after all these years. So that's from Article I of the Constitution. And presidents from 1778 onward –

said, okay, I can work with that. There's a huge loophole here. Like, no, I can't, you know, spend money myself. Like, I can't pay anybody myself. I have to wait for Congress. But that doesn't mean I can't, like, get the work done first, and then when it comes time to pay, I can just direct this contractor or vendor or whoever, militiaman, to Congress to go get money. Yeah, which is really...

I mean, that is so United States government to be like, well, I'm technically not writing the check. Right. I've just engaged someone services and now we owe them this money. Yeah. Congress pay this guy. He's yeah. Yeah. We he did what he's saying he did. And so there was this representative in Virginia who was not happy about this. Yeah. This kind of precedent that had been adopted by the executive branch. This representative said in 1806 that presidents were acting like a saucy boy.

whose wealthy grandfather was going to cover his needs. And that that was the case. So eventually Congress said, we've got to close this loophole. And they did in 1884, I think. Yeah, the Anti-Deficiency Act basically said, no, you can't just pay the guy to paint your house and then stand there tapping your toe looking at the guy with the checkbook. Right, exactly. As a matter of fact, they said, you can't –

spend a single dime that Congress hasn't already appropriated for that. That's right. You just can't do it. So much so that, again, you can't even accept volunteer work unless it is basically to protect life or public safety, something really, really important. Right. But when we say we fund you, Congress funds the executive branch, all the agencies in the federal government to

We really mean it, and that's what the Anti-Deficiency Act really said. Yeah, but it would take until 1974 when Richard Nixon signed the Congress Budget and Impoundment Control Act. It's a barn burner. Yeah, but that's what really changed everything, and that's what kind of laid out this process that we still work with today or don't work with or sit on our hands and hold our breath. Right. Ideally, it functions –

kind of clunky even in its best form. Yeah. But purposefully so. It's to keep Congress from being profligate with its spending, right? Like, I mean, it's to say this group over here and this group over here. We're taking the same task and making you guys do it twice separately and then come together and hammer out the details. Yeah, it's really discouraging to look at the history of our country and the

You know, the idea should be that like, all right, we know that in this country we have a lot of people that feel one way about a lot of stuff, a lot of people that feel the other way. And the government's job should be to come together and negotiate and find nice middle grounds. Right. And it seems like it's more like the government just finds loopholes and is sneaky and underhanded to find workarounds from actually trying to work together and find a middle ground. Right. It stinks. It does stink a little bit. I'm sick of it.

I'm pretty fed up with government, too. I think most people in America, and I would gather the UK, too. All right. Oh, man, especially right now. So here's how it happens. Every year, the two chambers of Congress, they have to agree on a budget for the discretionary spending, which is I think only 30% of the overall budget is discretionary. Everything else is mandatory or non-discretionary, and that means—

Stuff that you just can't not pay for. Right. And it's mostly things like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, entitlement programs. Right. To where these are mandatory programs that are created by an act of Congress that says whatever these programs need to run and operate, that's how much Congress gives them. There's no spending levels. There's no, you know, what about this? Like you can go in and monkey with the operation by congressional act.

But as far as spending and budget goes, whatever they need, they get. That's right. The other stuff, the discretionary stuff, that's, what did you say, about 30% of the budget? It's 30%, but that's still like in 2018, that was $1.2 trillion. And it's really important stuff. It's not like...

the mandatory spending is the only important stuff. We're talking about the FDA, Homeland Security, TSA, the NIH, National Parks, the IRS. The Department of Defense. Yeah, big-time stuff. Basically everything except Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Oh, really? Is that 70%? Essentially. Geez. I know. All right, so this all starts, this appropriations process. It's laid out for the first Monday in February.

And this is the deadline. It lines up with the deadline for the president to submit their budget to Congress, which you always hear this is the president's budget. The president oversees stuff and approves stuff, but the president's not in there with the calculator crunching numbers. No, no, no. It's the Office of Management and Budget that does it for the president. That's right. But it's under the president's direction. The president says, I really want to do this, but I don't want to do this anymore. Right.

But the thing is, it's almost like a little kid going through the Montgomery Ward wishbook and then writing their list in crayon that has about the same polling power as the president's budget. Yeah. It really is saying this is what the president wants to do, and then Congress either says these are good ideas or they say we're not listening to that at all because it's not legally binding in any way. There's probably, in fact, party line templates. Yeah.

They just throw down like a mad lib. And they tweak it a little bit, but they say like, oh, here's the Republican-style budget and here's the Democratic-style budget, Obama or Trump, and now do your minor tweaks. Right. I think that is kind of –

It's got to be because it's a huge, massive document. Yeah. They can't like start from scratch every time, can they? No. It's got to be like the first few pages are what really count. You know what I mean? It's got to be. But again, this is like – they call it in this article like the wish list of funding priorities and that's a good way to put it. The Montgomery Ward wish book wish list. Do you remember that? I was –

Sears kid. I didn't discriminate. I went through all of them to make sure I had all my bases covered. Yeah, we didn't even have Montgomery Ward, so I've never laid eyes upon that catalog. It was...

It was good. It was a good one. I put it up against the Sears one. Yeah, we had Sears and then I guess Service Merchandise was another big one. Oh, I remember that. Didn't they sell everything from like Diamond Rings to Casio keyboards? Oh, they sold everything. I think I bought my very first guitar from Service Merchandise. Oh, nice. And returned it like a week later because it was cruddy. Broken. And I went to a real guitar store. Sam Ash? No. Actually, I remember I went to Dirt Cheap Music on Memorial Drive. It's not there anymore. Oh, that's good. Shop local. Yeah. Yeah. Dirt Cheap.

Buzz marketing for a business that is no longer around. So they've got this wish list.

Then it goes on to Congress, and they have to pass what's called a concurrent budget resolution. Right, and Congress can totally ignore the president's budget. They can take it into consideration. If Congress is controlled by the same party the president is, the president's wishes are probably going to be taken into consideration. But ultimately, Congress says this is what we want to do. And from what I can tell, when they come up with this concurrent budget resolution,

Right? Yeah, concurrent budget. A CBSR, concurrent budget resolution. It's basically just setting the spending for the year, right? That's all that is, isn't it? Like the cap on what the federal government can spend entirely? I think so. It's just that broad agreement of the total amount of spending. Okay. And then it starts to get divvied up. Yeah, they're not in the weeds at this point. No. But they're supposed to pass that by mid-April, and that's where they set these spending levels for 20 categories of

And this is where, you know, this is where it starts to break down or not break down, but like in a bad way. But they start to break it down because it's such a massive thing. You got to break it down into smaller departments. Right. So Congress says, here's the total amount of money that we're going to spend this year. And it goes to the Appropriations Committee.

in the Senate and the Appropriations Committee in the House. And then each of them says, okay, we've got this whole, let's divvy it up into 12 slices. Not necessarily equal slices. I think they'd probably be pretty lazy. But they say, you know, agriculture and rural development, you're going to get this much this year.

commerce, justice, and science. You're going to get this much, like this slice of the pie. And they do that over 12 departments that roughly correspond to the different cabinet posts in the federal government. That's right. And it's up to those subcommittees, those 12 different ones,

once they get their little slice of pie to then decide how to eat that pie or eat that piece of the pie. There's an appropriations subcommittee that says this is how you're going to spend this. That's right. And they have hearings and stuff like that where, like, the heads of these departments come and say, we really need this. We've got some really exciting stuff coming up. Give us some more money. We figured out how to ride sharks and hunt dolphins with spear guns, and we really want to get into that this year. Or, you know, we really need to build this thing

Or the military really needs to upgrade that thing. Right. Stuff like that. And then these appropriation subcommittees, each one dedicated to a group of agencies or an agency, just a single one, say, okay, this is how we're going to spend this money. That's right. And then once that happens in the House and the same thing happens in the Senate, those two groups, the appropriation subcommittees for each of these 12 slices of pie come together. Ideally. Ideally.

And they say, well, we came up with this. What did you guys come up with? And they say, well, we came up with this and we're off by $7 billion. How are we going to figure this out? That's great. Only $7 billion. Right. That's nothing these days. Well, they negotiate with each other to come up with a joint spending bill. I imagine those meetings are contentious and tough. Sure. And eventually, though, ideally, they negotiate that spending bill. Then that gets sent to the president. Right.

And they can veto that or sign that. Right. So remember, there's 12 – there's actually 24 of these going on over 12 different slices of pie. And when they come back together and form 12 different appropriations resolutions –

They can say, we're done. This is good. Let's send it to the president, and the president can sign that. If things are going along really smoothly and Congress wants to show off, they'll say, we want to get all these together in one package. We're going to present all 12 to the president, and the president can either sign or veto them. So the president can sign or veto each one separately. Mm-hmm.

In small groups or as a whole? As a whole is called omnibus. Yeah, if you've ever heard the term omnibus spending bill and you're like, what in the world is that? That just means it's everything grouped together. Right. And so one reason that you would go through the headache of trying to put all 12 of those appropriations bills into one package...

is that if there's something in one of those appropriations bills that you want out, you've got a lot more leverage in the other 11 that you can trade from the budget as a whole to get that thing out or get this thing in. If it's one appropriations bill, you have much less leverage. So that's why they would go to that trouble. But that's fairly rare, I believe. Yeah, and this is all due by October 1st because that is the beginning of the federal government's fiscal year is October 1st.

And since we've been doing this in modern times, I believe 1977 was when we started this process. Congress has passed all 12 by October 1st by that deadline. Only four times. Four times. That's right. So we'll take a break and we'll discuss what happens all of the other times right after this. Thank you.

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Grammarly, enterprise-ready AI. So, okay, Congress comes along. Also, big shout-out to Dave Ruse. This is his first article that we're doing an episode on. Yeah, Dave is one of the great writers from HowStuffWorks.com that we long admired over the years and tapped him to do some stuff for us. Tapping him.

We're tapping them, and he's tapping back. It's great. We've got a pretty great little stable going here. We've got Dave Roos, Julia Layton, and The Grabster, all writing for Stuff You Should Know right now. That's right, and I think if they keep up the good work, then that's all we need. Sure, yeah, I think so too. Because we still put together our own stuff too. Yes, we do. I want to give us a pat on the back as well. All right, that's fine. All right, so... I just pulled a muscle in my arm. I can't write this week. So like we said before the break...

this has only happened four times in the, and since 1977 that all 12 appropriations bills were passed by that October one deadline. That's so funny. So when it comes to October 2nd, it doesn't mean if, um, we haven't passed those appropriations bills, it's like everything just stops working. Right. Because if you pay attention to the news, you will notice that there's something called a continuing resolution. So this can happen for a lot of reasons. One, um,

One good and sort of non-offensive reason could be that, man, we were really close and we're almost there. We just need another week or the weekend. We'll work through the weekend even to get this done. Right. A good but offensive reason is because someone farted and everyone cleared out of the chamber and missed the deadline. So they had to do a continuing resolution. Oh, okay.

No, I mean if they're close and they just need a few more days to work it out, then that can happen. They'll pass a continuing resolution, which means everything stays the same. You don't get any more money or you don't get money taken away. Just keep – like operate as usual. Right. You can't increase spending. You can spend differently or whatever, but you can't spend above the levels of the previous fiscal year. No new spending. That you're currently in, right? That's right. Okay. Okay.

I'm with you. I think a continuing resolution, whether it's one for a day or for a year, and there have been ones that have been like year-long continuing resolutions. Yeah, there's no limit. You can pass them forever long you think you need. Right. It does show that negotiations are still ongoing. They haven't broken down. They just haven't reached the point where they're in agreement yet. That's right. The problem comes when they stop issuing continuing resolutions. Right.

That's right. Dave Thu and a few pretty cool facts here. 186 continuing resolutions have been passed since 1977, and 117 of those or those have been since 1998. Yes. So it's taken them 117 times that they could not work it out since 1998. That's a lot. Yeah, it is, but if you think about it, the –

It's about evenly split. Well, no, it's not evenly split. It's like 70 to, I think, 69 to 117 over two 20-year periods. Oh, yeah? And it does seem to be getting worse, but that's kind of lopsided because in 2001, there were 21 of that 117. Yeah. 21 of them all came in 2001. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm not quite sure about this, but I wonder, is the number, an increase in continuing resolutions, is that like a barometer for government or how government's working? Uh...

I don't know. Because I wonder, because, I mean, ideally, like, they would get all this done by the October 1st deadline every time. Well, it depends because, as this points out, like, sometimes it is over the weekend and it's just a few days. Right. And they're, like, really close to having it worked out. So, to me, that's not the biggest deal in the world. That doesn't mean the government isn't functioning well. Right. I mean, as well as it ever does. Sure. Am I right? Yeah. But, like, in 2007...

11, and 13, they were all year long. There were no appropriations bills. Right. They just said we're just going to repeat last year. Or no real appropriations bills, I guess. Right. They just said, remember the spending levels from before? Go with God. That's what you got again this year because we can't come to an agreement. Yeah, that's when things are bad. So continuing resolutions too, like it doesn't affect spending levels or it doesn't increase them. It can't.

I wonder, I don't know if it can decrease them or not. I know you, it just basically says same spending level as last year, so maybe it can't decrease them either. I think you can't decrease. I think it's just your current funding is locked. Right, but you can attach riders on to continuing resolutions. Yeah, these policy riders, um...

those can be like the make or break. And if it's clean, which I don't know how often that happens, I'd be curious to see a stat. But if it's a clean policy writer, that means it has nothing else, or a clean...

CR. CR. It doesn't have any policy writers on it. That's right. So a lot of times, though, if there's a policy writer on a CR, it might be like, okay, we can't come to an agreement about Medicaid funding abortion. That was a big one in the 1970s. Yeah. And –

But in this same appropriations bill that we're haggling over, there's this other thing that's like super critical. It's like local hospitals aren't going to get any NICU funding and it's about to run out. Right. So we need to increase the NICU funding.

for local hospitals, and we'll attach that as a policy writer to this continuing resolution because this is kind of an emergency, and it doesn't really have anything to do with the contentious part that's keeping the policy or the appropriations bill from being passed. Right. So that's, I think, usually what happens with that. You know what show really nails this stuff is Veep.

Oh, my gosh. For all it's like, you know, comedy and funny stuff, it seems like they really nail kind of what it's like in Washington. Sure. Because there's a lot of talk of this kind of stuff. Yeah. Clean bills and riders and who's on whose side and can we sway this one person over to our side. Yeah, a lot of just dirty, dirty language. Oh, yeah. God, man, Julie Louis-Dreyfus. She is a national treasure. Totally. Totally.

I had one interaction with her briefly. When? In L.A. in my friend's building in Los Feliz, the Hollymont building. He lived there. Scotty, you know Scotty. Sure, of course. And we had a case of beer and a pizza and some snacks, and we were going. She showed up and was like, where's the party? Well, that's sort of what happened. We were going up in the front of the building, and she was shooting New Adventures of Old Christine right there at the entrance. And we literally walked by her house.

And they were like putting on her makeup like right in front of, they were right about to go. And she said, who are those guys? I want to go with them. Where are you guys going? And of course we're like, come on up. That's cool. And then an electrician knocked on her door and asked to put a light in his apartment, shining out the window. How much did you charge him? No, we didn't. We were just like, come on in. Oh, that's nice. And then Eric Estrada showed up and arrested you. All right. So where are we here? So I'll tell you where we left off, Chuck. Okay.

We left off with continuing resolutions. Temporary funding. Yeah. Eventually, if a position is contentious enough about some part of the budget. Right. And very rarely is it something –

Is it something financial necessarily? Like it has to do with finances because it's in the budget, but typically it's something more political than that. Like the idea of Medicaid funding abortions. Right. In 1977 and 1978, there were – impasses were reached where they could not come to an agreement –

on using Medicaid to fund abortions, federal dollars to fund abortions, right? That's right. Very contentious issue. Yes, it had to do with money. It had to do with finances, Medicaid funding. But really, it was about the social issue, this cultural issue, abortion.

And that's usually the kind of political impasse or divide that it takes to really reach a point where one side says, you know what? I don't even agree to this continuing resolution anymore. Just forget it. We're done. Yeah. It seems like it's usually something that is so important to that either president or party or both that they feel like it's worth digging in. And a lot of times that has to do –

Sometimes that has to do with the thing itself, but sometimes it has to do with the perception of that thing to your voting base. Sure, that's part of it too. But I mean, we're talking politicians here. I think you could have just said the last part, you know? That's true. So what happens when they fail to pass that appropriations bill and they're not talking? You're going to get a funding gap, and that doesn't necessarily lead to a shutdown either. Can we please get to the shutdown? Yeah.

Well, since 1981, more than half of the funding gaps lasted just a few days when I talked about solving it over the weekend. A lot of times that will happen over the weekend. And if it's less than a few days, that means no one had to sit out work or whatever or was furloughed. Right. So technically the government was shut down, but no one noticed because it happened on days when the federal government isn't open anyway. Right.

Yeah, and until 1981, they were actually allowed to keep operating. But the Reagan administration changed all that. Yeah, what was the name? Benjamin Civilletti? Civilletti? Civilletti?

Technically, in Italian, it would be ch, because a C followed by a vowel makes a ch sound. Did you know that? I do, and I don't remember this guy. I don't either. I mean, we were young and probably too young to really know about attorney generals yet. Young and reckless. Like I knew the president and the vice president. Sure. And maybe the speaker of the house or something. First attorney general I was cognizant of was Edwin Meese. Wasn't he, or was he state? I don't know.

I don't even know. He was the first cabinet member I was aware of, Edwin Meese. Yeah, I know Ed Meese. Because I think they made fun of him in Mad Magazine. It showed him getting hit by a mousetrap or something because he was a Meese. That's kind of how I was exposed to politics too. Mad? I think so. Sure. Yeah. I knew all about Spiro Agnew.

even though I had no idea who he was. I still don't really know who he was. There's this great Simpsons quote where Milhouse and Bart are looking at a bad magazine, and they're like, they're making fun of that Spiro Agnew guy again. He must work there or something. And I remember thinking, like, I guess Spiro Agnew works there. Right. Because they used to skewer, like, the publisher, too, so I just thought Spiro Agnew was one of them. I think it's a funny name, too, in comedy circles. Yeah. It's a good one. Yes, Attorney General Benjamin Cibilletti. Nice.

He was Reagan's AG, and he said it is not constitutional to keep spending money without congressional approval, which is what's happening when you say, we'll go ahead and keep working, federal government. So he – I mean they kind of –

made shutdowns happen. Yeah, like it was like, okay, we're shut down, ha-ha. We're still just continuing on like normal until Ciavoletti said, well, remember that Anti-Deficiency Act? That's actually for real. And I saw somewhere that they actually enforced that and like federal agencies are frequently fined.

for violating these things, like going into contracts or hiring people when they don't really have the money for it. And I saw somewhere...

The SEC got an $800 million fine once for it. Couldn't find it anywhere else. But it was a spectacular enough number to at least mention it. So, Chivaletti really changed the rules for shutdowns because before, if the government shut down, but the government still functioned, it was almost more of like a...

what's the word I'm looking for, ceremonial kind of thing. I know what you mean. It didn't really mean anything. It was symbolic. Symbolic, yes. Once Civiletti said, no, no, no, we actually can't stay open during a shutdown, that made the whole thing way more politically risky. And so they stopped happening nearly as frequently from that point on. That's right.

Things have changed since then. Tremendously. And there have been four times and sort of recently where people really dug in and there were what we would call major shutdowns.

The winter of '95-'96, there were two shutdowns because of Bill Clinton being a Democrat and Newt Gingrich hating his guts. He was the House Speaker at the time in the Republican-controlled Congress, and Newt was all about the Contract for America, which basically was small government, lowering taxes. Really sticking it to the poor.

Yeah, like really higher restrictions on – or more strict restrictions on welfare recipients. Yeah. So he and Bill Clinton went at it for a long time. They really did. And I mean like each side was dug in. And Gingrich was trying to shove that contract with America down Clinton's throat. It's not what Clinton's policies were. And Clinton said no, and neither side would give. Yeah.

And finally, and this is how shutdowns usually get resolved, they start doing polls of the American public and say, who do you blame for this? And almost invariably, the public says Congress. This is Congress's fault that the country is just being weakened right now by this government shutdown and then Congress relents. And that's what happened. For those two, both of the shutdowns were a combined 26 days of

And Republicans in the Congress were to blame, according to American people. Right. In polling numbers, at least. So, you know, they said, sorry. Fine. Fine. We'll try to get you impeached instead. Should we talk about 2013? Yeah.

Yeah, I remember this one really clearly. That's right. President Barack Obama, Republicans in Congress again, Ted Cruz. Like almost single-handedly shut the government down, if I remember it correctly. Yeah, he passed a bill that Republicans were very upset about the Affordable Care Act. And he did all he could to defund that, basically defund it.

what was later to be known as Obamacare. And he was like leading a kind of a rogue faction of Tea Party Republicans because John Boehner was the speaker at the time and he was a traditional conservative Republican. Right. And I believe he was on board to just at least with continuing resolutions to

to keep the negotiations going. And I remember Ted Cruz just being like, nope, I'm shutting the government down. And it was a ballsy move, I'll tell you that. That's right. And that lasted 16 days. 800,000 federal workers were furloughed, which we'll talk about what that means here in a minute.

But again, public polling and public outcry was against the Republicans at the time. And they said, all right, we'll pass a CR and let's change some things about the Affordable Care Act, but we will pass a CR. Right.

They basically got some minor changes, I think. A big one, the biggest concession they got was that there would be income verification for people who were applying for Obamacare. That's right. We should talk about the most recent shutdown as well. 2018-19. I remember this one too, like it was yesterday. It basically was yesterday. And this was obviously when Donald Trump said, I want a border wall.

And I want $5 billion to get this thing going. And Democrats said, no, you're not. And they had a meeting on TV, which was really weird. Oh, it was so weird. And Chuck Schumer –

tricked Donald Trump into taking responsibility for the shutdown. Did Schumer do it? I thought he just like out of nowhere asserted it. I thought I remembered Schumer sort of tricking him in the room into sort of claiming ownership, almost like a dare. And Trump was sort of like, yeah, it's my shutdown. Oh, really? Because this is important. Yeah. And, you know, you could see Schumer kind of laughing like, oh, I don't think he even understands what he just said. Yeah, I'm sure the Republicans were like, I can't believe you just said that.

That's right. And there was a partial shutdown on December 22nd that ran for a historically long 35 days. Yeah, the previous one in 2013 was 16 days. The previous record was the 95-96 ones combined were 26 days. Yeah, those were two days.

This was 35 days. Over Christmas and New Year's, which was a tough time to do that. Yeah, it was because, again, the deadline is October 1st. So they had created continuing resolutions from October 1st or September 30th on to December 22nd. And then finally on December 22nd, I remember this.

Trump had been signaling that he was willing to give and I guess at least keep negotiating continuing resolutions. And Ann Coulter – That's right.

That's right. Expressed on Trump's behalf that he would not be giving on this position. I forgot about that. And that the government shutdown would go on. And Coulter basically single-handedly forced this government shutdown because she said if you give on this, like, we're done. I will vote against you at the polls and make sure everybody else does. And that's when Trump's will was bolstered tremendously, and that's when the government shutdown happened. That's right. You want to take a break? Yeah. How many people are still listening to this, do you think? Roughly...

70%. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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In Orlando, meetings reach another level thanks to a growing list of award-winning restaurants, a world-class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and of course, the weather. That's right, Chuck. Andrew Moyes, VP of Fan Expo HQ, had this to say about Orlando. Often, we will bring our entire team to Orlando for the event, and that includes our executive level team members as well. And we're able to give them a great experience with luxury hotels,

special restaurants, all those key things to feed into the proper executive experience. He also said that Orlando's easy airport access and close proximity to hotels and transportation make it a top choice for hosting major events. And while you may know Orlando for its attractions, industries like healthcare, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing make it a hub for cutting-edge businesses.

Or, in the words of Mr. Moyes, Orlando can really be that destination where you can innovate, collaborate, and look to the future. And that's what makes Orlando unbelievably real. Learn more at OrlandoForBusiness.com. Okay, Chuck. So, yeah.

Well, we should – we left a cliffhanger. The government was shut down when we left. Oh, yeah. It came back. It came back. After how long again? 35 days later on January 25th, Trump called off that shutdown without that funding for the border wall again because public perception –

was swayed, not in his favor. Right, which is rare. Again, every single one of these shutdowns, everyone said it was Congress's fault. With this one, they said it was the president's fault. Surely that at least partially had to do with him claiming on TV that it was his responsibility for shutting down the government. That didn't last long, though, because I remember, and it gets so just childlike and snippy, but with the tweets from both sides calling it the Trump shutdown, Trump calling it the Schumer-Pelosi shutdown. Uh-huh.

trying to hashtag these things, see what's trending. It's all just so ridiculous. It is.

Twitter. So the shutdown ended. And like you said, Trump didn't get that $5 billion for the wall. I think they ultimately added like $1.6 billion for border security, but nothing specifically for that wall. Right. And the Democrats started saying, well, like, let's really define wall. Right. Yeah, I remember that. But what people like to point out is not only did Trump not get that $5 billion, but America lost everything.

at least $11 billion. Yeah. Right? During this shutdown. Yeah, of income. Right. So there's a real economic cost to government shutdowns. Basically, everyone, I don't care whether you're a Republican stuff you should know, listener, a Democrat stuff you should know, listener, an anarchist stuff you should know, listener, a centrist stuff you should know, listener, doesn't matter. You should be really mad at your government whenever there's a shutdown. That's right. Because it is holding...

people's jobs hostage. Millions of people depend directly on the federal government for their paycheck. And during a shutdown, you don't get a paycheck. Some people even have to work. But the people who don't have to work not only don't get a paycheck, they will never get that money for the work that they missed against their own will during that shutdown. Yeah, like you can apply for back pay. Is that right? No. No.

You can't? No. For who? No one can? No. If you worked during the shutdown, you can get retroactive pay. Congress has to approve it, but you had to have been working. It had to have been an essential job. So you can't get back pay for furloughed time? No. Okay. It's just gone forever. So people who were out of work—

who are federal workers, I think about 800,000 of them during the 2018-19 shutdown, the Trump-Schumer-Pelosi shutdown, they went without pay for 35 days. Yeah, 380,000 of the 800,000 federal workers actually had to stop working. That's almost every bit of NASA, HUD, Housing and Urban Development staff, 80% of National Park Service employees.

50,000 workers at the IRS. And then the other 420,000 that they deemed essential, uh,

They still worked, and I believe they're the ones that could apply. But they aren't guaranteed that money though, right? No. Again, Congress has to vote. And usually as part of a shutdown, just to kind of like get public perception in Congress's favor, Congress will hold a vote. Right. And almost nearly – almost every time nearly unanimously vote for retroactive pay when this thing is over. Right.

The problem is, is again, those people who aren't working during that time, whose jobs are deemed non-essential, they'll never get that money. They just don't get it. And that, I mean, if you project it to your future retirement, like that's money that you're not investing. Yeah.

A, you're not buying things with it. Right. So you're not helping the American economy. Especially during the holidays is last time. Yeah, you're not investing in the stock market. You're not taking care of your retirement. So it has these ripple effects that last, you know, months and years. Right. So just to get a little bit back to the nuts and bolts of all this.

It's not like every time there's a government shutdown, the same agency or the same people are affected in exactly the same way. Each shutdown is different because do you remember how there's 12 different appropriations bills that have to go to the president? Some of those –

can be passed and signed before the shutdown ever happened. If that happens and your agency was in one of those appropriations bills, it's like every other Tuesday or Wednesday for you during the shutdown. Right, but you can straddle those agencies and they can be split and that can get weird. It can. Well, like a good example of it getting weird is when this past one happened. The Coast Guard, which falls under the Homeland Security slice of the pie,

Homeland Security hadn't been funded yet. So the Coast Guard had to keep its operations going without pay while the rest of the military, the other four branches, were just operating as normally because the defense appropriations bill had already been passed before the shutdown. That's right. So depending on which bills have already been passed, some groups are working, some groups aren't. And even in each agency where –

the funding hasn't been appropriated for this coming year. There will be some people who will be working and others who aren't. And it's up to each agency during a shutdown to say, this is how we're going to function during this. This is the jobs that have to be carried out, whether the government's open or not.

And these are the people who can be sent home without any hopes of ever getting paid. Yeah, like A, you see the thing coming. So it's not like a big surprise. But B, you have this sort of plan already in place. It's called – you submit it actually to the Office of Management and Budget. And you coordinate with them rather. And that's where –

You got to lay out your plan. That's what they say. They know it's coming, and so they got to plan accordingly. And like I remember, I have friends that worked for the federal government, the CDC and places like that. And, you know, they watch this stuff really closely. Sure. And some of them were furloughed and, you know, went 35 days without a paycheck. Right. And so there's that personal level where you missed rent that month. I can't remember who was it, Wilbur Ross? Yeah.

One of the cabinet members was like, go take up a craft or a hobby and turn that into money to pay your rent or just something, some unsolicited advice that no one wanted to hear right then. It was not welcome. Yeah. Get on Etsy. If you are in that position, like, yes, you missed rent, you missed your car payment, you missed all sorts of stuff. Even if you're not a federal employee –

You're still probably affected in one way or another. And the longer that a shutdown goes on, the more and more people are affected. Everybody from people who are trying to get their passport application pushed through to people who are supplemental nutrition program recipients, welfare recipients, food stamps. Sure.

children's morning breakfast programs, like all these things start to run out of funding and they get affected and more and more people start to be directly impacted by these shutdowns the longer they go on. Sure. The FDA, food inspections can be curtailed.

And in fact, during long shutdowns, there are safety experts that say you might want to steer clear of fresh food right now. Yeah, don't eat like that bag of romaine lettuce, especially if you're pregnant or something. Or let me see, the National Park Service. This was a big one during the last shutdown. Yeah.

I think some parks were closed altogether. That's how they did it in 2013. Yeah, that was a big one. They lost $76 million a day and lost revenue for the National Park Service. But this most recent one, some of them were shut down, some of them were kept open but not staffed. Right. So very famously, I think it was at Joshua Tree where they damaged –

like irreparable damage to some of the Joshua trees. Somebody cut down at least one Joshua tree, which take centuries to grow. Yeah. So that they could drive their off-road vehicle in an area where you're not supposed to drive an off-road vehicle so they could get to it. They cut down a Joshua tree and that became kind of symbolic for that last shutdown. I mean, there's a range of problems that range from inconveniences to not getting paid, but

You know, imagine coming from another country and planning this thing for a year. You put all this money into a trip to come see the greatest places in the United States. Sure. You know, I'm from wherever. I'm German. Germany? I was going to say Germany. And I want to go see the most beautiful things in America. I want to go to the Grand Canyon in Yellowstone. And I've had this trip paid for and planned, and it's not refundable. Right. What do you mean Mount Rushmore is closed? I can see it right there. It's closed. Well, yeah. Sorry, Franz. Sorry. Sorry.

Go see, I don't know, what else is around there? Not much. No, there's nothing. That's kind of the point. Yeah. You go see Van Nostrand's childhood birthplace. That's right. And again, these are seemingly like if you ask the federal government, they're like, who cares about that minor inconvenience? Well, there is one thing that I came across that I found particularly scummy, Chuck.

During government shutdowns when other people who are working are not getting paychecks. Oh, yeah. Here we go. Some congresspeople still get theirs. All congresspeople do, but some have the wherewithal to be like, I'm not taking any pay during this shutdown. Right. Like maybe I'll get it retroactively. That's fine. But you just hang on to my paycheck. Other congresspeople are like, yeah, keep the money coming. I need it.

Which is – that's super scummy to me. Other people are out of work or working and not getting paid. Like the TSA famously had to work and whether they wanted to or not and they didn't get paid. Or they're calling in sick. They should – yeah. They should not be – Congress should not be getting a paycheck during that time because it's Congress' fault. I know. Yeah.

I think they said that TSA employees, about 10% at one point were calling in sick every day after a little while. You remember that? Yeah. It was not a good time to travel. And that's an inconvenience. People flying. Yep. Taking longer. When's the next one coming, Chuck? That's what everyone wants to know.

October 2nd? We'll keep an ear out for it. In the meantime, now you know everything there is to know about government shutdowns. There's more little interesting details, but if you want to know about them, you can be a saucy boy or girl and look it up on the internet. And since I said saucy, it's time for Listener Mail. We have a couple of corrections. We haven't done these in a while. We haven't made mistakes in years. That's right. These are both yours, not to pile on. Oh.

Hey guys, I want to point out that Donald Trump spoke to the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, about the arrest of Aesop Rocky, not the king. Yeah, everybody was really making a lot of noise about that over here because I got it wrong. And he said, I would not have even sent this email if Josh hadn't finished that story with, this is reality, what I just said is actual facts. It was close enough. Yeah, it was just a slip of the tongue. Facts are the lowercase f.

And that is from Hampus Bavjerg. What? Try that again. Hampus Bavjerg. Let me see.

There's a lot of consonants in there. I'm sure some of those are quite silent. Wow, I think you nailed it. But you forgot the grip. Is that his last name? I think Bob Jurg is the middle name of Hompus. So Hompus Grip. And I love that he put Swede in parentheses as if I had to see that. And then the other one was a math thing, and I'm kind of curious about this one. Nuclear semiotics, Josh said 9,000 seconds is 446 days. He said it's 104 days. Mm-hmm.

And he said, I don't know that you guys are busy in recording and performing calculations. He said, but I'm really curious just where that number came from.

He said, "Because no combination of multiplying dividing 9 million by 60 or 24 yield 466. And I'm really just curious. You guys do a great job. Thanks for everything. Joey Russo." Thanks, Joey. I think that that number was where my fat thumb and Siri got together and had a baby. That's where I think that 446 came from. Gotcha. And I'm sure right after you said that, I went, "Uh-huh, that's right." Yeah. So I'm equally to blame. Thank you, Chuck, for taking that for the team. Sure.

Team Josh. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know what kind of mistakes I've been making left and right and Chuck's been abiding, we love that stuff. Love it. Can't get enough of it. So get in touch with us. You can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check out our social links. And as always, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Thank you.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In Orlando, meetings reach another level thanks to a growing list of award-winning restaurants, a world-class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and of course, the weather. Andrew Moyes, VP of Fan Expo HQ, had this to say about Orlando.

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and hide a secret from everyone around her.

The next great CBS mystery, Matlock, continues with a new episode Thursday, 9, 8 central on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.