This past government shutdown was the longest in American history, and it resulted in the furlough of 380,000 workers and missed paychecks.

While there has been backpay, the human effect of the shutdown was a major political force in the 35-day shutdown.
Before discussing the effects and factors regarding the government shutdown, it’s important to determine the process by which a shutdown takes place.

Exclusively, bills regarding taxes originate in the House of Representatives. Said bills determine the revenue from taxes levied on citizens and residents, each specified for projects in each of the Cabinet agencies. The bill must first pass the House and then the Senate.

This shutdown could best be described in the motives of the three bodies responsible for the shutdown: the President, the 115th Congress, and the 116th.

The President

The phenomenon of Donald Trump is largely attributable to the fact that there is a significant income disparity in the United States.

This income disparity results in a smaller middle class, and an increasingly impoverished middle class. This results in a former middle class that feels disillusioned with the establishment. Furthermore, there exists a trend of a disproportionately polar Republican Party. One factor that could contribute to this is the perception of a stunted economy, as many of the Trump base feel.

When there is a perception of a stunted economy, the historical trend indicates that the majority population is more attracted to a strong-man nationalistic figure. Trump cultivated a strong-man cult of personality and espoused his nationalism in scapegoating the Hispanic ethnic minority and the Muslim religious minority.

These actions culminated into his flagship policy: the wall. This wall is the perfect cross-section of nationalism and the strong-man persona. Because of its high visibility, the wall became an icon of strength. Because the purpose was to stop illegal border crossing, it became a simplistic idea and solution that was easily accepted by a common denominator.

Because the wall is so iconographic of Trump’s campaign policy, it became necessary for Trump to build the wall, both as a show of power and as a publicity stunt for his voter base.

However, as US Government teacher Mr. Brad Seltzer put it, the shutdown “was [the result of] failed hostile negotiations.”

Especially regarding the 116th Congress.

115th Congress, Forming the Stalemate

The outgoing Republican-controlled Congress began the shutdown in December when the previous budget bill ran out of funding. Given that two resolutions had been passed regarding the continuation of various Cabinet agencies, the shutdown that ensued was only partial.

The third resolution was to hold the appropriations for the wall, but the Republican Congress did not add such a provision to the additional appropriations bill.

While it seems oxymoronic for the Republican Congress to omit the 5 billion dollars required for the wall, it was actually a move to avoid a government shutdown.

The composition of the 115th Congress did not allow cloture, meaning that the Senate minority, in this case the Democrats, could filibuster without check.

Effectively, a filibuster kills a bill and stops it from passing the Senate.

Typically, a government shutdown is followed by a finger-pointing contest, a public spat in which neither political party wants to take place. So, in a push to attempt an avoidance of a gridlock regarding the wall, the House Republicans passed appropriations resolutions that omitted the funding so that it would pass the Senate Democrats.

“[The wall] was so unpopular with the Democrats, it was definitely going to get filibustered,” Seltzer said.
Contradictorily, the efforts to bypass a shutdown resulted in said shutdown.

116th Congress, Breaking the Stalemate

The new, progressive freshmen class of Congressmen and Congresswomen inherited the shutdown from their day of inauguration on January 2.

On that day the House turned into a Democratic Majority, meaning that there was little-to-no chance of a wall appropriation being added to the final resolution required to reopen the government.

Seltzer, in an interview before the end of the shutdown, asked in reference to the stalemate, “Where are they going to get hurt the most?”

For Trump, he was hit the hardest in public opinion. Initially, great damage was caused by the admission of President Trump where he admitted, to the face of a widely smiling Chuck Schumer, that “I’ll shut [the government] down.”

Typically, government shutdown initiates finger-pointing with the debate on who started it.

In no uncertain terms, Trump claimed responsibility for initiating the shutdown.

The debate during the shutdown, after the blame has been rested in the initiation, is who is at fault for continuing the shutdown. The House Democrats refused to pass any bills regarding the wall in the duration of the shutdown.

To end it, the Democrats passed a bill in the House that would end up being a temporary re-opening of the government during which a full 2019 budget would be negotiated after the return and backpay of the 380,000 furloughed government employees. After the passage of this bill, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to put the resolution on the calendar.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, amongst other prominent House Democrats, initiated a social media firestorm centering around the hashtag #wheresMitch. Throughout this entire process, the Democrats had the Republicans beat in the public relations sphere.

As a result, the government was opened for a two-week period.

Aftermath

In the fallout after this story, President Trump fallaciously declared a state of national emergency regarding the border wall, allowing him to use the Defense Department discrecional funds to fund the project. This was a reaction to the passage of a budget that did not contain the wall.

In the short term, this government shutdown has resulted in President Trump causing a potential constitutional crisis.

However more importantly, the 35-day cost the US economy dearly.

Seltzer predicted that “an economic downturn is going to happen,” down the road, and that it would be caused by the shutdown, and the current, ongoing trade war with China.

This downturn, according to Seltzer, will be on the magnitude of the 2008 recession.

Mark Zandi, an economist, predicted that a recession-level downturn will happen because of the shutdown, the trade war, and the inevitable mess that Brexit has come to embody.

Brexit is actually a major factor, because the current policy may result in severe economic effects in the British economy which will cause a chain reaction of a worldwide downturn.