America’s next government shutdown could be the strangest yet

With another government shutdown looming, it is easy to assume that this particular governance failure is happening more often. Yet far fewer shutdowns have taken place in the past two decades than in the 1980s and 1990s. While funding gaps remain relatively rare, they now tend to last longer and the politics behind them are increasingly bizarre. The next shutdown could be the strangest yet.

About two-thirds of federal spending is mandatory and dedicated to entitlement programmes, but discretionary spending requires annual authorisation. In theory, the process is simple. The president proposes a budget, Congress negotiates and legislation is signed into law ahead of the new fiscal year, which begins on October 1st. In practice, Congress has met this deadline only three times in the past half-century. Lawmakers often buy time with temporary resolutions to keep current funding levels. Since the 1980s, funding gaps have led to government shutdowns.