The U.S. government partially shut down after failing to agree on a budget for the new fiscal year, which began on October 1, and not passing temporary funding. This is known as a shutdown or a full shutdown because it affects all government agencies and requires most employees in every department to take unpaid leave, which will be compensated later.
This is unique to the U.S. government, where a greater share of government activities is halted due to officials being furloughed. Only employees whose work is essential to critical government functions are allowed to remain on duty.
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It should be noted that this is truly an emergency mode of government operation, meaning most processes are frozen while the rest are significantly slowed. One of them is negotiations on arms for Ukraine, which has already been reported by a number of Western media outlets. This also applies to the approval of any arms sales, including those under the PURL mechanism. This is due to the lack of personnel in government offices to handle the required paperwork.
This raises the question of how long the U.S. government shutdown might continue. The first thing to understand is that a shutdown is not a routine process. Since 1976, when legislative changes made it possible, there have been 27 shutdowns, only three of which were truly "complete."
The duration of such shutdowns is not legally regulated and depends solely on politicians' recognition that this is an extreme mode of government operation. Any interruption in government activities leads to lost budget revenues and slows GDP growth.
The longest "complete shutdown" was from October 1 to October 17, 2013, lasting 16 days, during Barack Obama's presidency due to the Affordable Care Act. According to rough estimates, it cost the budget $2-2.5 billion and caused up to $6 billion in economic losses.
At the same time, the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history occurred during Donald Trump's first term. This was due to a funding dispute over the so-called wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, which led to a shutdown from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019. It did not actually affect the majority of officials, with 420,000 continuing to work, including all security services and agencies. However, 380,000 officials from most civilian agencies took 35 days of leave.
So, the current White House administration has considerable experience with shutdowns and can even use the 16-day shutdown during Obama's term as a benchmark to counter criticism from Democrats.
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