Divided Government

Even as President Obama won reelection in 2012, the U.S. government became increasingly divided between liberals and conservatives.

Learning Objective

Analyze the relationship between Obama and Congress, particularly during his second term

Key Points

Discontent over Democratic President Obama's Affordable Care Act helped the Republicans capture the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.
The Tea Party emerged from the right wing of the Republican Party and pulled the traditional conservative base further to the right; the party was strongly opposed to abortion, gun control, and immigration, and focused primarily on limiting government spending.
Although Obama won reelection in 2012, Republicans retained their hold on the House of Representatives, and the Democratic majority in the Senate grew razor-thin; political bickering and Republican resistance created political gridlock in Washington.
From October 1 through 16, 2013, the United States federal government entered a shutdown as Republicans in the House of Representatives attempted to delay or defund the Affordable Care Act.
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. The Affordable Care Act was launched as scheduled on October 1.
The House Freedom Caucus, formed in January of 2015, is a congressional caucus consisting of conservative Republican members of the House of Representatives who are politically aligned with the Tea Party.

Terms

Affordable Care Act
Also known as Obamacare, a United States federal statute signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010; represents the most significant overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system since 1965, and aims to increase the quality and affordability of health insurance, lower the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government.
Antideficiency Act
Legislation enacted by the United States Congress in 1884 to prevent the incurring of obligations or the making of expenditures (outlays) in excess of amounts available in appropriations or funds; prohibits the federal government from entering into a contract that is not "fully funded" because doing so would obligate the government in the absence of an appropriation adequate to the needs of the contract.
Tea Party
An American political movement known for its conservative positions and its role in the Republican Party; members of the movement have called for lower taxes and a reduction of the U.S. national debt and federal budget deficit by reducing government spending.

Full Text

Reelection and Political Gridlock

Discontent over Democratic President Obama's Affordable Care Act helped the Republicans capture the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. It also helped spawn the Tea Party, a conservative movement that emerged from the right wing of the Republican Party and pulled the traditional conservative base further to the right. The Tea Party, which was strongly opposed to abortion, gun control, and immigration, focused primarily on limiting government spending and the size of the federal government.

Obama won reelection in 2012, but the Republicans retained their hold on the House of Representatives, and the Democratic majority in the Senate grew razor-thin. Political bickering and intractable Republican resistance—including a 70% increase in filibusters over the 1980s, a refusal to allow a vote on some legislation, and the glacial pace at which the Senate confirmed the President’s judicial nominations—created political gridlock in Washington, interfering with Obama’s ability to secure any important legislative victories.

The 2013 Government Shutdown

From October 1 through 16, 2013, the United States federal government entered a shutdown and curtailed most routine operations because neither legislation appropriating funds for fiscal year 2014 nor a continuing resolution for the interim authorization of appropriations for fiscal year 2014 was enacted in time. Regular government operations resumed on October 17 after an interim appropriations bill was signed into law.

Contributing Factors

The tensions that would ultimately produce the 2013 shutdown began to take shape after Republicans, strengthened by the emergence of the Tea Party, won back a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives from the Democrats in 2010. Even at that time, some conservative activists and Tea Party-affiliated politicians were already calling on congressional Republicans to be willing to shut down the government in order to force congressional Democrats and the President to agree to deep cuts in spending and the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare"), which had been signed into law only a few months earlier. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican who had presided over Congress during the last government shutdowns 15 years earlier, said in April 2010 that if Republicans won back control of Congress in the 2010 election, they should remove any funding for the Affordable Care Act in any appropriations bills they passed.

The Affordable Care Act

Obama signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House, March 23, 2010

Soon after Obama began his second term that month, a coalition of conservative activists led by former Reagan administration Attorney General Ed Meese (who is also an emeritus fellow of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation) began developing plans to defund the Affordable Care Act. The conservative activists strategized that they would be able to block implementation of the Act if they could persuade congressional Republicans to threaten cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

The 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 (a sister organization of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation), offered several continuing resolutions with language delaying or defunding the Affordable Care Act. 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.

The deadlock centered on the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014, which was passed by the House of Representatives on September 20, 2013. The Senate stripped the bill of the measures meant to delay the Affordable Care Act and passed it in revised form on September 27, 2013. The House reinstated the Senate-removed measures and passed it again in the early morning hours on September 29. The Senate declined to pass the bill with measures to delay the Affordable Care Act, and the two legislative houses did not develop a compromise bill by the end of September 30, 2013, causing the federal government to shut down due to a lack of appropriated funds at the start of the new 2014 federal fiscal year.

On October 1, 2013, many aspects of the Affordable Care Act implementation took effect, and the health insurance exchanges created by the Act launched as scheduled. Much of the Affordable Care Act is funded by previously authorized and mandatory spending, rather than discretionary spending, and the presence or lack of a continuing resolution did not affect it. Some of the law's funds also come from multiple-year and "no-year" discretionary funds that are not affected by a lack of a continuing resolution. Late in the evening of October 16, 2013, Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014, and the President signed it shortly after midnight on October 17, ending the government shutdown and suspending the debt limit until February 7, 2014.

Effects

During the shutdown, approximately 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed (put on temporary leave of absence) 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 occurred 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.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted several months following the shutdown, 81% of Americans disapproved of the shutdown, 86% felt it had damaged the United States' image in the world, and 53% held Republicans accountable for the shutdown.

The Freedom Caucus and the Tea Party

The Freedom Caucus, also known as the House Freedom Caucus, is a congressional caucus consisting of conservative Republican members of the United States House of Representatives. It was formed by a group of Congressmen (many of whom are also part of the Republican Study Committee, another conservative House group) as a smaller and more active group of conservatives. The caucus is sympathetic to the Tea Party movement. According to its mission statement, "The House Freedom Caucus gives a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans."

The origins of the Caucus lie at the mid-January 2015 Republican congressional retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania, when Raúl Labrador and eight other representatives met separately from the main group to plan their own agenda. The group started with these nine initial members, who set a criterion that new members must be willing to vote against Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner on legislation that the group opposed.

Raúl Labrador

Raúl Labrador and eight other Republicans from the House of Representatives met separately from the main group to during a Republican congressional retreat in January 2015 to form the Freedom Caucus.

The Caucus was involved in the resignation of Boehner on September 25, 2015, and the ensuing leadership battle for the new Speaker. Members of the Caucus who had voted against Boehner for Speaker felt unfairly punished, accusing him of cutting them off from positions in the Republican Study Committee and depriving them of key committee assignments. Boehner found it increasingly difficult to manage House Republicans with the fierce opposition of the Freedom Caucus, and he sparred with them over their willingness to shut down the government in order to accomplish goals such as repealing the Affordable Care Act. On October 29, 2015, Paul Ryan succeeded John Boehner as the Speaker of the House.

Paul Ryan

On October 29, 2015, Paul Ryan succeeded John Boehner as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

[ edit ]

Prev Concept

The 2012 Presidential Election

Marriage Equality and the Courts

Next Concept