inthe00s
The Pop Culture Information Society...

These are the messages that have been posted on inthe00s over the past few years.

Check out the messageboard archive index for a complete list of topic areas.

This archive is periodically refreshed with the latest messages from the current messageboard.




Check for new replies or respond here...

Subject: Anyone remember the 1995-1996 Federal Government shutdown

Written By: Ryan112390 on 09/17/09 at 9:23 pm

Hey

Do any of you recall when back in December 1995-January 1996, the federal government shutdown?

For those who don't know,

''The 1995 shutdown of the United States federal government was a major political crisis in which the U.S. federal government, as a result of a failure to pass a budget bill, stayed nonessential services from November 14 through November 19, 1995 and from December 16, 1995 to January 6, 1996. The major players were Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.

When the previous fiscal year ended September 30, the president and the primarily Republican-controlled Congress hadn't passed a budget. Congress wanted additional cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental controls, and the EITC, which Clinton thought were unnecessary to balance the budget. The difference in opinion resulted from differing estimates of economic growth, medical inflation, and anticipated revenues.

To keep the government running in times of deficit, it is necessary to increase the limit of debt that the Treasury Department is authorized to accrue. In response to Clinton's unwillingness to make the budget cuts that the Republicans wanted, Newt Gingrich threatened to refuse to raise the debt limit, putting the country in default, which would presumably have had political consequences for Clinton. Since Gingrich expected Clinton to fold, the result was a game of Chicken between the two. Economically, the result would be a shaking investor confidence and higher interest rates, which would increase the cost of borrowing money.

Since a new budget hadn't been approved, October 1 started with the entire federal government running on continuing resolution, which authorizes funding for departments until new budgets are approved. The existing continuing resolution was set to expire on November 13 at midnight, at which point the country would default on its loans and government services would be forced to be shut down. Congress made many attempts to pass their cuts, which Clinton denounced as "backdoor efforts".

On November 14, major portions of the federal government became inoperative. The Clinton administration later released figures detailing the costs of the shutdown, which included losses of up to $800 million in salaries paid to furloughed employees. The first budget shutdown was resolved with the passage of a temporary spending bill, but the underlying disagreement between Gingrich and Clinton was not resolved, resulting in the second shutdown.

he Republicans tried to blame Clinton for the shutdown, but Clinton got a break two days later when Gingrich made a widely-reported complaint about being snubbed by Clinton; Tom DeLay called it "the mistake of his life".

Delay writes in his book, No Retreat, No Surrender:

"He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One...Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child. The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same."


For those who were then, what did you think of this as it happened? For those who just learned of it, what do you think of it?

Subject: Re: Anyone remember the 1995-1996 Federal Government shutdown

Written By: Foo Bar on 09/17/09 at 10:11 pm


Delay writes in his book, No Retreat, No Surrender:

((Gingrich)) told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One...
Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child. The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same."


Emphasis added by me.

I remember it, but I remember it from a distance.  I've always wondered why Newt lost that battle - but that sentence explains it.  He screwed up the meme.

DeLay was right - to borrow a car analogy, if the Schiavo debacle was the engine seizing, the loss of Newt was the coolant leak that turned the Elephant wing of the Party over to a bunch of religious fundamentalists.  If Newt had won that battle, his kind of 'pubbie would have been in charge for the 2000 campaigh, and it would have kept the Straussian/Rovian ("screw the spending, just get the Jesus folks on board because they're easier to manipulate than the fiscal hawks") folks in check. 

I'm imagining a Newt/Forbes '00 presidency:  9/11?  "Crap.  They knocked down a couple of nice buildings.  Fine, topple the Afghan government that harbored the masterminds, then build the towers back, but one foot higher, just to flip off the terrorists.  We could do that a dozen times (yes, a dozen re-bombings-and-rebulidings of downtown NYC) and it'd still be cheaper in money and materiel than diverting resources from Afghanistan into an attempt to occupy Iraq.  And if we need $100B/year to pay for a war, screw the fundamentalists, just take a nod from Forbes and legalize something and divert some of the DEA expenses, which are otherwise a dead weight on the economy, to the war effort."

For what little it's worth, I'd support a Newt 2012 campaign. 

(Relax, Democrats.  There are still Religious Republicans who still hold enough a grudge against Newt for the whole adultery thing to prevent him from ever getting the nomination.  The Elephant wing of the Party has to completely marginalize itself before you get any real competition, and that's gonna take until at least 2020.)

Subject: Re: Anyone remember the 1995-1996 Federal Government shutdown

Written By: Ryan112390 on 09/18/09 at 1:23 am


Emphasis added by me.

I remember it, but I remember it from a distance.  I've always wondered why Newt lost that battle - but that sentence explains it.  He screwed up the meme.

DeLay was right - to borrow a car analogy, if the Schiavo debacle was the engine seizing, the loss of Newt was the coolant leak that turned the Elephant wing of the Party over to a bunch of religious fundamentalists.  If Newt had won that battle, his kind of 'pubbie would have been in charge for the 2000 campaigh, and it would have kept the Straussian/Rovian ("screw the spending, just get the Jesus folks on board because they're easier to manipulate than the fiscal hawks") folks in check. 

I'm imagining a Newt/Forbes '00 presidency:  9/11?  "Crap.  They knocked down a couple of nice buildings.  Fine, topple the Afghan government that harbored the masterminds, then build the towers back, but one foot higher, just to flip off the terrorists.  We could do that a dozen times (yes, a dozen re-bombings-and-rebulidings of downtown NYC) and it'd still be cheaper in money and materiel than diverting resources from Afghanistan into an attempt to occupy Iraq.  And if we need $100B/year to pay for a war, screw the fundamentalists, just take a nod from Forbes and legalize something and divert some of the DEA expenses, which are otherwise a dead weight on the economy, to the war effort."

For what little it's worth, I'd support a Newt 2012 campaign. 

(Relax, Democrats.  There are still Religious Republicans who still hold enough a grudge against Newt for the whole adultery thing to prevent him from ever getting the nomination.  The Elephant wing of the Party has to completely marginalize itself before you get any real competition, and that's gonna take until at least 2020.)


From all I've read, I think both Newt and Clinton were really good guys--and a perfect political dynamic; Perfect political foils for each other that balanced each other out.

Check for new replies or respond here...