Subtitles (151)
0:00When a trash can gets full and
there’s a government shutdown,
0:03people don’t stop throwing stuff on top of it.
0:06But I did manage to pick up a couple
truckloads of trash before I was told:
0:10“Don’t do it anymore.”
0:11People were not even able to volunteer
during the government shutdown.
0:15"Stop the shutdown,
stop the shutdown!"
0:17The US is the only country in the world where
the government can actually shut down.
0:23And the threat looms nearly every year.
0:25"Seven days until shut down—"
0:29"Government shutdown at midnight tonight."
0:31I just feel my gut in my
chest - like, ugh, not again.
0:35So, why does the US even shut down?
0:39And what happens when it does?
0:42“You travel 3,500 miles to America
and find that they shut down!”
0:49Every government in the world
has to do the same thing:
0:52decide how to spend the country’s money.
0:55In the US, they do that by passing spending bills,
0:58called appropriations bills,
1:00that give these federal agencies their budgets.
1:03It happens every year — or every fiscal year.
1:08In Kenya, it's July 1st.
1:10In the US, it’s October 1st.
1:12And if the government misses that deadline...
1:15The budget wasn't passed.
1:17And then, "Oh, you have to come to work anyway."
1:19Just not getting paid.
1:21We did get back pay, but, still,
you have to wait for that.
1:23The saddest thing I’ve ever seen was seeing
all these hard working people in a line
1:30It’s the conversation at the
dinner table every single night.
1:33“Well, Dad, do you know when
you’re gonna get paid again?"
1:38It’s the way the US government
was set up. Kind of.
1:41The answer to why we have government
shutdowns actually starts in the Constitution.
1:45“No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but
in consequence of appropriations made by law.”
1:51And so what that really means
1:52is that before any federal money
can be spent, there has to be
1:55an actual appropriations law allowing it.
1:59But that can be interpreted in different ways
2:01and it has changed over time.
2:03Back in the 1800’s there were no shutdowns.
2:06But there were other problems.
2:07Agencies would routinely
blow through their budgets
2:13and would come back to Congress and ask for more.
2:16So Congress passed the Antideficiency Act.
2:19It tells federal officials that they really,
really can't spend money without an appropriation.
2:26But that didn’t stop the government from missing
their deadline, and creating long gaps in funding.
2:32As recently as the 1970s, there were
plenty of these funding gaps. And yet...
2:37The agency sort of pretty much just kept going.
2:40It couldn't possibly be that
Congress wanted them to shut down
2:43if there was no budget bill passed on time, right?
2:46But what happened was in the early 1980s,
2:49the attorney general issued two opinions
that tightened up this interpretation.
2:54The opinions basically said
2:56no seriously, unless Congress
has passed an appropriations bill
2:59agencies can’t spend any money.
3:02Including to employ the
services of their employees.
3:06Even though there technically is
money, we have no access to it.
3:11And since then, the US has
shutdown-shutdown many times.
3:141996 was the first big one, for three weeks.
3:18And 2019 was the longest in history, so far.
3:21I actually got to work and they was like,
3:24“We’re all furloughed.
They shut the building down.”
3:26I was like, “Oh, the doors
are not opening right now?”
3:29They were like, “No.
It's shut down completely.”
3:31I was like, “What is a furlough?
What’s going on?”
3:34I couldn’t work.
I couldn’t go in.
3:36We weren’t even allowed to check email.
3:39So I ended up picking up side jobs
trying to make ends-meet.
3:43These are all the agencies
of the federal government.
3:46Here are the ones that actually shutdown in 1996.
3:53Shutdowns don't have to be
of the whole government.
3:55So it might just be that one set
of agencies didn't get funded.
4:01Congress couldn't reach agreement
with each other and with the president
4:04on whether that set of agencies would get funded.
4:06But the rest of the government
was funded perfectly well.
4:08In 2019, around 800,000 federal employees
didn’t get a paycheck for 35 days.
4:15But more than half of them
still had to go into work.
4:18Because there are some jobs
that the Attorney General said
4:20are exempt from stopping completely,
4:22what we call “essential” employees.
4:25So while the Department of
Transportation was shut down,
4:27air traffic controllers still had to work.
4:30I don’t show up with a headset
and just do that job by myself.
4:34All the other aviation safety professionals
that assist us and help us on a daily basis
4:41Homeland Security shut down but
TSA workers still had to show up.
4:46We’re one of the lowest paid agencies.
4:49Not receiving a check every two weeks was hard.
4:52People on the floor were
smiling and greeting everyone,
4:55but behind closed doors in the break
room we had people breaking down.
4:59National Parks lost millions in entry fees.
5:02Wildfire mitigation projects were delayed.
5:05Immigration court hearings — backlogged.
5:08And, there were thousands of contractors
that work with all of these agencies
5:12who were also affected.
5:13If you were just working on
a contract with a company,
5:17you did not get back pay.
At all.
5:20My son has chronic asthma —
couldn’t afford his medicine.
5:27I was disappointed in them
and it wasn’t even my fault.
5:31And a shutdown isn’t just
centralized in Washington, DC.
5:35Only 15 percent of all federal
employees live in that area.
5:39Which means the economic-impact is country-wide.
5:42Shutting down not only
affects the federal workers.
5:46If people aren’t getting paid,
they’re not going out to eat.
5:49There is a severe economic impact
to something like that,
5:52especially in a town like Huntsville.
5:55Overall, the US economy lost $11 billion
during the 2019 shutdown.
6:00Some of that was regained when
employees received their back pay,
6:03but the damage was done.
6:05And the thing is, this doesn't have to happen.
6:08The legal framework explains why we end up
having to have shutdowns as a matter of law.
6:15But why we have shutdowns
truly is a matter of politics,
6:20which is that the more polarized the parties
are and the more divided our government is,
6:25the harder time Congress and the president
have working out a budget agreement.
6:30And having divisive politics
isn’t uniquely American.
6:35In Belgium, there have been times
where the politics were so bad,
6:38they just didn’t have a government.
6:40We didn’t really notice any difference.
6:42Our daily lives didn’t really change much.
6:45I don’t think the government
could really like — stop.
6:49Most countries couldn’t.
6:50In nearly every other country,
6:52if the government were to fail
to pass a budget by the deadline,
6:56agencies would just continue
working with last year’s budget.
6:59There’s a push to do that in the US, too.
7:02Just have an automatic, temporary appropriations
bill pass when the deadline is missed.
7:07The opposing argument to
that is "Whoa, whoa, whoa."
7:09"This is the one time we have every year to reset
7:13and to kind of work things out and
so where would the incentive go?"
7:17Congress has passed fewer
and fewer laws each year.
7:20Passing these appropriations bills has become
7:23the one time they’re kind of
forced to agree on something.
7:26And as the political ideology of each
Congress grows further apart each year,
7:30the likelihood of them agreeing
on time kind of goes down.
7:35"Washington’s version of groundhog day."
7:37"Another government shutdown looms."
7:39We are caught as pawns -
7:42Pawns in an ultimate game as a federal employee
in a conversation that has nothing to do with us.
7:46We’re not going to work
increasing the profit of a CEO.
7:50We’re doing public services and now I’m
not going to get a paycheck? That’s crazy.
