2013 United States federal government shutdown

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From October 1 to October 17, 2013, the United States federal government entered a shutdown and curtailed most routine operations because neither legislation appropriating funds for the 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" were permitted to report to work.^[1] The previous U.S. federal government shutdown was in 1995–96.^[2][3] The 16-day-long shutdown of October 2013 is the third-longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after the 35-day 2018–2019 shutdown 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, encouraged by Ted Cruz^[4][5] and a handful of other Republican senators,^[6] and conservative groups such as Heritage Action,^[7][8][9] offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the 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.^[10][11][12]

The deadlock centered on the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014, which was passed by the House of Representatives on September 20, 2013. The Senate stripped the bill of the measures related to the Affordable Care Act, and passed it in revised form on September 27, 2013. The House reinstated the Senate-removed measures, and passed it again in the early morning hours on September 29.^[13] The Senate declined to pass the bill with measures to delay the Affordable Care Act, and the two legislative houses did not develop a compromise bill by the end of September 30, 2013, causing the federal government to shut down due to a lack of appropriated funds at the start of the new 2014 federal fiscal year. Also, on October 1, 2013, many aspects of the Affordable Care Act implementation took effect.^[14] The health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act launched as scheduled on October 1.^[15] Much of the Affordable Care Act is funded by previously authorized and mandatory spending, rather than discretionary spending, and the presence or lack of a continuing resolution did not affect it. Some of the law's funds also come from multiple-year and "no-year" discretionary funds that are not affected by a lack of a continuing resolution.^[16] Late in the evening of October 16, 2013, Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014, and President Obama signed it shortly after midnight on October 17, ending the government shutdown and suspending the debt limit until February 7, 2014.^[17]

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted several months following the shutdown, 81% of Americans disapproved of the shutdown, 86% felt it had damaged the United States' image in the world, and 53% held Republicans in Congress accountable for the shutdown.^[18]