Word: shutdowns
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After a year of dazzling freshman acolytes with his big thoughts and frustrating Democrats with his discipline, last week the House Speaker seemed to revert to the bomb-throwing, publicity-starved backbencher he was in the 1980s. On Tuesday night, with a partial government shutdown at hand and his deficit-reduction plan heading for a Presidential veto, he charged onto the virtually empty House floor to rant about the budget before C-SPAN cameras and a handful of junior members. The next morning, he whined to reporters that his stubbornness on the budget was partly inspired by an indignity...
...federal shutdown immediately sent home some 800,000 "nonessential" federal workers, bringing government agencies, museums, parks and laboratories to a halt. "Essential" workers--including national-security, safety and communications personnel--were ordered to stay on the job during the crisis. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin juggled the federal books and tapped two civil service retirement funds in order to avert a potentially chaotic default on government obligations...
...federal shutdown energized Republicans in the House and Senate to overcome most remaining differences and hone the final version of their seven-year balanced-budget plan. The two chambers also sent a $243 billion defense-appropriations bill to the White House for yet another anticipated veto--this time for spending more than Clinton desires...
...bill adding $67 billion to the nation's $4.9 trillion debt ceiling, and will probably follow it with a measure extending government spending for a few weeks. However, Clinton is expected to veto the bills because of extraneous provisions he finds unacceptable. The likely result is a brief shutdown of nonessential government operations as the two sides find a compromise on the spending measure. One possible stopgap solution to the impasse over the debt ceiling: "borrowing" from the pension and savings of federal employees...
...government-run operations growing seedy while federal employees were off duty. West Point cadets, for example, will not earn the sobriquet "The Longhaired Grey Line" after all, now that their barbers are manning the chairs again. Keeping the West Point grounds decently manicured during the shutdown was not a problem, since a blanket of snow had covered the heights above the Hudson River...