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?