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This history of government shutdowns in the United States is relatively recent. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, government shutdowns did not exist, but since 1980 the trend of government shutdowns has not only emerged but has increasingly been as a weapon in US politics. Why has this happened?

====Government Shutdowns in the 1990s====

The first shutdown of the 1990s occurred during George H Bush's term from October 6-8th 1990. This shutdown was very minor in that it only affected a few thousand employees, primarily national park and museum employees were affected, with a cost to the economy between $2-3 million. In large part, this was because the shutdown occurred over a holiday period. The main dispute was Bush's desire to increase taxes and make major reductions to Medicare. Eventually, he and Congress compromised by not making large tax increases, with only wealthy individuals seeing their taxes rise, and reductions to government spending proposed were reduced.

For the appropriation of 2019, President Trump and some Republicans sought to have funding included in the appropriation for a protective wall along the US-Mexico border. Continuing resolutions that did not include funding for the wall were refused by Trump with Democrats also refusing to include any funding. The lack of compromise created the longest-lived shutdown. From December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019, the government shutdown affected more than 380,000 through furloughs and 420,000 workers were asked to work without pay. The shutdown mostly came to an end due to increased security and safety concerns due to the record shutdown period affecting the FBI and Transportation Security Administration (TSA), including many unpaid workers calling in sick.<ref>For more recent politics and government shutdowns, see: Kruse, K. M., & Zelizer, J. E. (2019). <i>Fault lines: a history of the United States since 1974 </i>(First edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.</ref>

====Summary====

Shutdowns entered American political discourse, in some ways, perhaps accidentally due to what was, at the time, a relatively minor disagreement about the FTC's role in regulating the economy that led to the Attorney General reinterpreting the 1884 Antideficiency Act to allow for government shutdowns. This decision could be argued has had a great effect on the US government and employees, as it now effectively set a precedent for the politicization of appropriation bills and made shutdowns possible. Whereas before it was not possible to shutdown the government, it became possible for even a minority party in Congress to delay or shutdown the government by demonstrating its disagreement about an issue, sometimes not even directly related to the appropriation in dispute. Shutdowns in 1995-96 had a major impact on US politics by making both parties avoid them for nearly twenty years, but that changed during President Obama's tenure and today's increased partisanship has also led to a more recent record-breaking, at least in time, government shutdown.