Pod Insights Civics 101 The government is shut down....again. But what does that mean? About this episode In this episode, we give a brief explanation of what's behind the current government shutdown. The, we explain all the ins and outs of government shutdowns. Have they always been part of our legislative process? How do they happen? And what happens when they happen? Our guest is Charles Tiefer, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
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Transcript 4,470 words · 18 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 Born in Texas, made in America, that's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.
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0:59 Nick Capodice? Hello, everybody. Nick here. It is Thursday, October 16th, 2025. So every year, around about Christmas time, NPR's Morning Edition plays something called The Santa Land Diaries, which is David Sedaris reading about his experience working as an elf in the Macy's department store. It's sort of a holiday tradition. And we got our own Civics 101 tradition going on today. It's basically shutdown land diaries, where every time we have a government shutdown, we share our episode on government shutdowns. What shutdowns are, how they happen, why they happen, et cetera. So before we play that for you today,
1:42 Nick Capodice? I just wanted to give you a quick update on the current shutdown, the one that we're in as of now. So we are currently in the 16th day of a government shutdown. This is the 11th shutdown since 1980, where government employees were furloughed. And lots have been furloughed so far in this one, about 700,000 people. So what is causing this government shutdown? Well, like most government shutdowns, the two parties are at an impasse. It's a standoff. The Democratic Party refuses to sign a seven-week stopgap funding bill until
2:22 Nick Capodice? language is written into that bill to extend the very soon-to-expire government subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. And what does that mean? Well, in brief, if those subsidies expire, millions of Americans will pay up to twice as much for their healthcare premiums. Now, the Republican Party says that it is willing to negotiate the extension of those subsidies, but not until the government is reopened. So like I said, it's a standoff. There have been some notable twists in this shutdown, by the way. Most recently, that the very conservative representative of Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has called for Speaker Mike Johnson to reopen the House and to extend the healthcare
3:07 Nick Capodice? subsidies. She said, quote, "Look, Democrats, you created this mess. Republicans, you have no solutions. You haven't come up with a new plan in place, and we're not even talking about it, and it is hurting so many people," end quote. Also interestingly, the Department of Homeland Security has made a video. This video will stream when people are waiting to get through airport security. And in this video, Department Secretary Kristi Noem says the Democratic Party is to blame for the shutdown. Now, several airports have refused to play this video. One airport spokesperson saying, quote, "We did not consent to playing the video in its current form, as we believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits the use of public
3:51 Nick Capodice? assets for political purposes and messaging," end quote. There's a lot more going on, but the last thing I'm going to say about this shutdown, and this is just me, it doesn't feel to me like this is just about extending healthcare subsidies. It feels like it is also the Republican Party's stated support of the president's administration, and the Democratic Party's frustration with the administration, with the ICE agents, military deployment in American cities, the Epstein files, a No Kings rally going on this weekend, Speaker Johnson's refusal to seat a newly-elected Democratic Congresswoman, all of it.
4:34 Nick Capodice? So that is the standoff we are in right now. But to learn about how shutdowns work... Here we go.
4:44 Speaker 03 Nick.
4:45 Nick Capodice? Yeah.
4:45 Speaker 03 I think that I have done a pretty good job of not referencing The West Wing on this show. I think I've shown a lot of restraint.
4:54 Nick Capodice? I think that's fair.
4:55 Speaker 03 For someone who works on a show that's largely about government and still cries about a quarter of the time when I watch The West Wing. I will admit, I occasionally bring up the Bartlet for America napkin, but that's it, right?
5:11 Nick Capodice? You do bring that up, but in your defense, it's a pretty cinematic moment.
5:14 Speaker 03 It is. But today, I'm doing it. I'm breaking. I'm gonna reference The West Wing quite a bit. Also, by the way, for anyone who has never heard of or never seen The West Wing, it is a TV show from the 90s and the early aughts about a fictional president, Jeb Bartlet, and his administration. And it has been roundly praised for being relatively true to the actual goings-on of The West Wing, if pretty idealistic and sentimental, which is why I cry all the time. And the government of Myanmar reportedly used The West Wing to study how democracy works.
5:53 Nick Capodice? Although I do know that Gerald Ford's daughter couldn't watch it, apparently, because they got the layout wrong. And the frequent walk and talks, they turn left when it's actually a right turn, and they turn right when it's actually a left turn?
6:04 Speaker 03 Whatever. Nevertheless, I recently re-watched a certain episode. And Nick, my, how the world has changed.
6:19 Speaker 04 Let's be clear, sir. You will be held responsible for shutting down the federal government. Then shut it down.
6:26 Nick Capodice? Oh, it's so dramatic.
6:29 Speaker 03 It is so dramatic, but Nick, government shutdowns actually used to mean something. The name of that episode, by the way, for anyone who's looking for it, is just "shut down." I mean, can you even imagine, at this stage, a United States in which a shutdown warrants this kind of music?
6:49 Nick Capodice? I feel like nowadays, the announcement of a government shutdown would elicit nothing more than like a trombone going.
6:59 Speaker 05 I'm Hannah McCarthy.
7:00 Nick Capodice? I'm McCabidiche.
7:01 Speaker 05 And this is Civics 101. And today, we are talking about the grind-to-a-halt disaster that has taken on new meaning in recent years: the government shutdown.
7:11 Speaker 06 Top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer tonight. The possible shutdown less of a concern now than the divide among Democrats. Tonight lawmakers racing to prevent a government shutdown. Both chambers need to vote.
7:21 Speaker 07 So we told the president we needed the government open. He resisted. In fact, he said he'd keep the government closed for a very long period.
7:29 Speaker 08 A new poll shows more Americans blame the president and his party for this historic standoff.
7:34 Speaker 09 Unfortunately, Congress has not fulfilled its responsibility. It's failed to pass a budget, and as a result, much of our government must now shut down until Congress funds it again.
7:52 Nick Capodice? I feel like government shutdowns are pretty commonplace nowadays, but I do want to point out, I don't remember hearing about them when I was a kid.
7:59 Speaker 05 Okay, yes. The thing is, the government shutdowns were certainly happening as you were growing up. The public just was not paying as much attention to them.
8:11 Nick Capodice? Why wouldn't you pay attention to the government itself shutting down?
8:14 Speaker 05 Well, before we talk about what a government shutdown used to be, let's quickly establish what it actually is.
8:21 Speaker 10 A shutdown is like a disease in the budgetary process.
8:25 Speaker 05 This is Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore. He spoke with the original host of Civics 101, Virginia Prescott, back in 2017.
8:34 Nick Capodice? Right, so before we stumbled into our longest shutdown ever.
8:37 Speaker 05 Correct, just before the 2018 shutdown. This is when we were on the verge of it, and everyone was like, what does a shutdown mean again?
8:46 Speaker 10 Annual spending bills are supposed to regularly follow one after the other, so as one expires, the one for the spending for the next year takes over.
8:58 Speaker 10 But if you have a giant glitch in the spending process, the one for a prior fiscal year expires and there's no new one in place. And that means the government finds it has an empty wallet without any money in it they can spend.
9:16 Nick Capodice? In other words, a government shutdown is when the government fails to fund itself?
9:21 Speaker 05 And to understand government shutdowns today, it helps to know where this relatively recent phenomenon came from.
9:29 Nick Capodice? Wait, we haven't always had them?
9:31 Speaker 05 No. Our government did not have its first shutdown until 1976.
9:38 Nick Capodice? So for the first 200 years of our government's existence, we didn't have a single shutdown?
9:43 Speaker 05 Correct.
9:44 Nick Capodice? So what on earth went wrong?
9:46 Speaker 05 All right, before the mid-'70s, the president had way more control over the budgeting process. Then Richard Nixon came along and took it to the next level. He refused to spend congressionally appropriated funds.
10:00 Speaker 11 The time has come for a new economic policy for the United States. Its targets are unemployment, inflation, and international speculation. And this is how we are going to attack those targets.
10:12 Speaker 05 Congress got mad and passed the Congressional Budget and Empoundment Control Act of 1974 to gain more control. As is in the name. 1976 came along and President Gerald Ford vetoed an appropriations bill because he felt trapped by a Democratic Congress. He wanted more control. And the government shut down for 10 days.
10:35 Nick Capodice? Did everyone freak out?
10:37 Speaker 05 Not really. Everyone assumed Congress would just figure it out. And they did. Also, because we'd never had a shutdown before, the government just went on spending money that it hadn't appropriated. The Attorney General later decided during the Reagan administration that spending money you didn't have was illegal.
10:56 Nick Capodice? All right, but I grew up in the Reagan administration, and I still don't remember shutdowns.
11:00 Speaker 05 Reagan had eight government shutdowns during his administration.
11:05 Nick Capodice? Eight shutdowns?
11:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, the most of any president ever.
11:09 Nick Capodice? Wait. We hear about Reagan's legacy all the time. Why doesn't anybody mention that he had eight shutdowns?
11:17 Speaker 05 All right, so here is the big shift that changed government shutdowns forever.
11:24 Speaker 05 Before the 1990s, government shutdowns were typically about line-item quibbles, disputes over very specific funding decisions. For example, we shut down, under Carter, for a full 18 days when he vetoed an appropriations bill that funded an expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
11:43 Speaker 12 We are going to hold down government spending, reduce the budget deficit, and eliminate government waste.
11:51 Nick Capodice? So what changed in the 90s?
11:53 Speaker 10 Oh, that was a Titanic clash in 1995.
12:00 Speaker 10 A new Republican House and Republican Senate had been elected in the 1994 election. So you had the first Republican Congress in ages and ages and ages. It'd been decades since there'd been a Republican House. This was led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he thought that this would batter down the doors of the White House and that he would make them sign bills about key spending programs, including perhaps cuts in entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid.
12:39 Speaker 13 He talked about letting Medicare wither on the vine. The fact is, there is a 45% increase in general Medicare spending that is twice the inflation rate over the next seven years.
12:52 Nick Capodice? Okay, I do remember it being a huge deal, that Republicans had control of Congress for the first time in like 40 years.
12:58 Speaker 10 And President Clinton, who had lost the Congress in the 1994 election, had been elected with a strong Democratic Congress in the 1992 election, and then lost in the midterm election. He had laid low for a while. He hadn't been fighting, he hadn't been standing up visibly against the Republican Congress, but he stood up on the shutdown. He said, "You want to shut me down? Go ahead and shut me down. I'm here to protect Medicare, Medicaid, the environment, and Social Security." And he drew the line in the sand, and that was what the government closed down on, that clash at the top level.
13:36 Nick Capodice? This sounds familiar.
13:37 Speaker 05 Doesn't it, though?
13:38 Speaker 04 You will be held responsible for shutting down the federal government. Then shut it down.
13:43 Speaker 03 Okay, so this major shutdown happens in the 90s and it lasts 21 days. And this is a big deal. And I don't know why you don't remember it, probably because you were a teenager and had other things on your mind, but the point is, the government shuts down for a long time. And this time, it is about something big. It's not some small line item. It's about political ideologies of a president.
14:13 Nick Capodice? Just like Jeb Bartlet.
14:15 Speaker 03 Just like Jeb Bartlet.
14:16 Speaker 14 We still haven't cut enough spending. I agree. I want you to cut agriculture subsidies and you want me to cut Medicaid again. You know I'll beat ho any Medicaid cuts and I know you won't give me any agriculture cuts. So here we are.
14:30 Speaker 03 And by the way, Republicans in the 90s made a bet that the public would back them in this fight and they were wrong. It divided and hurt the Republican Party. And everyone was so wounded by this moment that for the next 17 years, we avoided another shutdown.
14:49 Nick Capodice? What year did that episode of The West Wing come out?
14:51 Speaker 03 It was 2003.
14:52 Nick Capodice? Okay, so when that episode came out, government shutdown had become a different, scarier political beast and a really big deal that we all worked hard to avoid.
15:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, even when we had budget issues, which happened all the time, Congress was able to prevent shutdown by passing what's called a continuing resolution. Here's Charles Stifler again.
15:13 Speaker 10 When you have a gap, it's possible for Congress to say, we don't have our act together to pass another full-length appropriation bill that would be 100 pages or much more, depending on which one it is. We don't have our act to do that, but we could pass a one paragraph statement that you just continue spending for the next 30, 60, or 90 days at the rate from last year. And that's like a bandage over the sore and it works. During that period, the government has a wallet. There are many complaints about that situation, but it is not a shutdown.
15:51 Nick Capodice? Which is something that President Biden signed to avert the first potential shutdown of his administration in 2021 and again in 2023. But Hannah, our longest shutdown so far, 34 days under President Trump in 2018.
16:08 Nick Capodice? That seemed to confirm this new normal, that government shutdowns will be the inevitable result of partisan battles between Congress and the president. And they don't seem to have any lasting political consequences. So what happened?
16:24 Speaker 03 Well, we saw our first government shutdown since Clinton during the Obama administration with this big fight over the Affordable Care Act.
16:32 Speaker 09 About three weeks ago, as the federal government shut down, the Affordable Care Act's health insurance marketplace is open for business across the country.
16:41 Nick Capodice? Another example of a party not getting what they wanted and gambling on a shutdown.
16:45 Speaker 03 And also, I think, another example of partisanship, of a Congress that does not want to compromise. Because before the 90s, remember, shutdowns were typically short and represented the time that it took to make a compromise on usually something smaller. And that's just not really the case anymore. So Obama had just the one shutdown, but then Trump had three, although one of them only lasted for nine hours. And now, you know, so for me, when someone at the FDA tells me, as they recently did, that they might not be able to do an interview in a week because the government might be shut down, I'm like, yep, that sounds about right.
17:29 Nick Capodice? All right, so government shutdown has gone from this sort of temporary hiccup, barring negotiation, to a commonplace political tactic.
17:36 Speaker 03 At least in our current political climate. And for us laypeople, us non-government employees, who can kind of shrug at a shutdown because it isn't reflected in our paychecks, I feel like we should emphasize that a shutdown does matter to everyone. It does affect your life. And we're going to find out how after the break.
18:03 Nick Capodice? Have any of you out there ever Googled your own name, like actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing, there are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up.
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21:27 Speaker 00 Born in Texas, made in America, that's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.
22:00 Nick Capodice? All right, let's get back to it. What actually happens when the government shuts down?
22:06 Hannah McCarthy? Great question. Here's Charles Tiefer.
22:08 Speaker 10 The government has various...
22:11 Speaker 10 Guides, legal opinions of the past, practices of the past, guidelines and so forth, to follow, which say some activities can continue to be funded, sort of on an emergency basis, so that the armed forces aren't left without the ability to get ammunition. Things that must continue on an emergency basis are able to, but the government splits apart and quite a lot of its activity isn't emergency, is just a continuing need of the public, and that it can't spend on during a shutdown.
22:52 Speaker 05 And for many of us, the problem does start and end at inconvenience.
22:56 Speaker 10 Among the examples, so most of the IRS shuts down, if you have a question and you need to get an answer, you can't get an answer, you can't call up, no one will answer the phone.
23:08 Speaker 05 Now, what shuts down during a shutdown, all depends on what has or has not been funded at that point, but you're usually going to see the Parks Services close up shop, meaning bye-bye to your trip to Yellowstone, the same goes for Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo. Immigration courts typically close, as if the backlog wasn't bad enough. Most of the Department of Agriculture, which monitors farming and forest regulation, shuts down. NASA even has to power down some of its large-scale instruments.
23:41 Nick Capodice? Really?
23:42 Speaker 05 Yeah.
23:43 Nick Capodice? I didn't know that. What about stuff like regulation, like food and drug inspection, does that continue?
23:49 Speaker 10 Food inspections are considered an emergency service, and they do continue.
23:53 Speaker 05 And things like entitlements, meaning Medicare and Social Security, those don't need annual spending bills, so those keep churning. But there are examples of people being disastrously affected by a government shutdown.
24:06 Speaker 10 I can tell you what one of the most horrible examples of what happens during a shutdown. In the Health and Human Services, they have what they call trials, tryouts, tests for new drugs, new treatments. And new people cannot be enrolled in a clinical trial. New patients, desperate new patients, cannot be enrolled in clinical trials during a shutdown period. And so you would see, you saw the last time that there was a shutdown, these frantic parents saying, I can't get my son or daughter into a trial.
24:50 Speaker 10 They've got one of these rare types of childhood cancers that there's no good regular treatment for. I can't imagine what insanity is going on that they're not letting my child get enrolled.
25:01 Speaker 05 And just to be clear, in terms of who is affected by something like that, as of October 2021, there were over 100,000 clinical trials registered in the United States alone. Halting that much work can have devastating consequences.
25:18 Nick Capodice? So if Health and Human Services were to shut down during a pandemic, what would happen to all the research, the response, and vaccine development?
25:25 Speaker 05 Well, fortunately, that's considered an emergency service. And for example, HHS created a full what we're going to do with COVID-19 if the government shuts down plan. But keep in mind, these emergency workers, these people who still show up and do the job, they are technically working without pay.
25:43 Speaker 10 There is no money for them. It used to be the custom that when the shutdown was over, they would pay people retroactively. But there have been threats during recent pre-shutdown periods by some, you might call some anti-government or small government people who say, let's, we don't want to pay the civil service. Let's not pay them at the end of the, let's not pay retroactively at the end of the shutdown.
26:12 Nick Capodice? So who gets to make the call in terms of what actually is an emergency service or not?
26:18 Speaker 10 Well, that has gotten more organized. A few decades ago, it was pretty random. Supervisors at low levels would make the decisions. But now there's supervision on high from the White House. They keep a pretty elaborate tab to make sure there's some uniformity in what's shut down and what's not shut down, so that the different cabinet departments have some kind of a similar read.
26:53 Speaker 05 No matter how well a shutdown is organized, it is still a shutdown. There is a civic impact. A shutdown affects how we think of our government. The public does not like it.
27:09 Speaker 10 Well, they all think it shows gridlock in Washington and that Washington is dysfunctional. That's something pretty common that you see during shutdowns. And they consider it the extreme example that the government can't get its act together. The public doesn't like disorderly things like shutdown.
27:29 Nick Capodice? Essentially, even if it is commonplace, it's the kind of thing we roll our eyes at but expect. Shutdowns do endanger faith in our government, which I feel is bad for all of us in the long run.
27:45 Speaker 05 And Nick, just to bring this walk and talk full circle, this is exactly the point that that West Wing episode is trying to make, that shutdown is trying to make. The government shuts down because there was a compromise to keep everything going, and then that compromise is retracted. And Jeb Bartlet is like, do your job.
28:07 Speaker 14 We had a deal. I don't care if my approval ratings drop into single digits. I am the president of the United States, and I will lead this government shutdown until we reach an equitable agreement.
28:23 Nick Capodice? This episode was made by Hannah McCarthy with me, Nick Capodice, and edited by our executive producer, Rebecca Lavoy. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Music in this episode by Xylozyco, Wildlight Meter, Daniel Birch, Cycle Hiccups, and Dio. Is there anything in the news that you think we should do more explainer episodes about? We would love to hear what those things are so we can get to work on them. Send us an email at [email protected] , or you can tweet to us. I just can't stop saying tweet. Don't get mad at me. @civics101pod. And don't forget, you can support the show with a donation right there in the show notes. Get yourself a hat. It's fast, it's fun, and you're going to be supporting work that really matters. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio. Zubidi bop.
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