United States Government Shutdown of 2013

From October 1 through 16, 2013, the United States federal government entered a shutdown and curtailed most routine operations after Congress failed to enact legislation appropriating funds for fiscal year 2014, or a continuing resolution for the interim authorization of appropriations for fiscal year 2014. Regular government operations resumed October 17 after an interim appropriations bill was signed into law.

During the shutdown, approximately 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed, and another 1.3 million were required to report to work without known payment dates. Only those government services deemed "excepted" under the Antideficiency Act were continued; and only those employees deemed "excepted" continued to report to work. The previous U.S. federal government shutdown was in 1995–96.The 16-day-long shutdown of October 2013 was the third-longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after the 18-day shutdown in 1978 and the 21-day 1995–96 shutdown.

A "funding gap" was created when the two chambers of Congress failed to agree to an appropriations continuing resolution. The Republican-led House of Representatives, in part pressured by conservative senators such as Ted Cruz and conservative groups such as Heritage Action, offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare"). The Democratic-led Senate passed several amended continuing resolutions for maintaining funding at then-current sequestration levels with no additional Conditions. Political fights over this and other issues between the House on one side and President Barack Obama and the Senate on the other led to a budget impasse which threatened massive disruption (Wikipedia, 12,18,2013)undefined

Background
The United States Constitution requires government spending be approved in bills passed by the United States Congress. Some government functions such as the Federal Reserve System are completely self-funded. Others, like Social Security and Medicare are partially self-funded but may be subject to administrative shutdowns and failures if the government fails to meet its financial obligations. Some programs are fully or partially funded for multiple years and some are funded every year.

The legislation that sets government spending is called appropriations legislation. Since the 1990s, Congress has often failed to pass the twelve to thirteen appropriation bills that set government-wide spending, often passing "Continuing resolutions (CR)" to extend existing spending law at or near current levels, and "omnibus" bills that combine many appropriations bills into one. Budget negotiations can be difficult when the president is not of the party that controls one or both houses of Congress. Prior to the shutdown, the last budget was passed on April 29, 2009 (Wikipedia, 12/18/2013).

Due to every Cyanocitizen at the time of the shutdown haing dual United States citizenship, Cyanocitta felt the economic impacts of the shutdown. Many Cyanocitizens received benefits from the United States government or had family members who depended upon government salaries, all of which were ceased for the 16 day period the government was shutdown.

Cyanocitta Response
In retaliation, the Cyanocitta Cristata Principal Republic enacted a program known as the Legislative Incompetency Relief Program, which granted citizens impacted by the shutdown a 1/4 Pound daily stipend to mitigate the damage done to their livelihood.

In addition, the Republic claimed large portions of the territories left without a federal government, so as to prevent anarchy from causing further harm. Also to prevent anarchy and prevent the Republic's government from being corrupted, the greater Chicago area was marked for destruction. As the shutdown continued, these claims increased to include nearly half the then defunct United States. Several Laws were also passed and planned to be enforced in the claimed territories, but Cyanocitta emisarries never made it to inform the population.

After the United States passed a bidget and reactivated, Cyanocitta quickly renouced all of its new claims to prevent a political incident with the superpower.