In many western countries, when a government can't form a working coalition or agree on a budget, new elections are called.

American shutdowns were invented when someone realized that the Antideficiency Act probably prevents the government spending money if Congress failed to pass a budget. We could, if we wanted, amend that act to provide for an automatic continuance of funding, but we haven't.

Deadlocks like this are definitely a feature of our system that Westminster-style systems resolve differently, but shutdowns are an artifact of an old law more than the constitutional organization.

(ditto the "debt ceiling", which only exists because of a stupid statute)

Other countries have a "If we have no functioning democratic government the budget is the same as last year" clause as well as a "In the event the government can't do it's job, the civil service (when it's called that) keeps the lights on"

Continuity of government is kinda the #1 priority of government as everything else they do is subordinate to that.

> Continuity of government is kinda the #1 priority of government as everything else they do is subordinate to that.

Well, to be fair, anything that is considered "essential" for the government to do is not, by definition, shut down.

Obviously, there will be differing definitions of "essential", but the continuity is there.

That said, amending the appropriate legislation to prevent this nonsense from being necessary when branches of government are at a stand-off should be the desired goal.

Yea, and if we did the continuance bit, we'd end up always running on automatic continuance funding, because that means all the politicians can continue to not do the hard work of negotiation and compromise.

I like the 'triggers an election' thing. Puts the right pressure in the right place - if people in place can't get along and come to a reasonable compromise to keep the country working, then the people need a way to make some changes.

The government runs on continuing resolutions when they can't decide on a real budget pretty often already. It's not great, but it's way better than parties being able to hold government workers hostage over policy priorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_resolution#List_of_...

The US system is so archaic at this point, the founding fathers never anticipated the federal government budget being this important to the country. Provisions for dealing with something like a shutdown just aren’t in the constitution other than 2/3 supermajority requirements for veto override or impeachment, which is a recipe for gridlock.

Many US states have much more sane budgeting systems and manage to run even under divided government without issue.

>a recipe for gridlock

That was the whole point of how the government of the US was designed: it's supposed to be hard to "get things done" at the federal level

Yea, because the feds were supposed to only handle post roads, the military, and free trade between the states and tariffs on international commerce.

The modern welfare state, where millions of people are immediately hurt by the federal system grinding to a halt and stopping, would have been anathema to the framers. Nevertheless by popular vote such programs have been federalized and now we have a constitution that doesn’t support their smooth operation.

> The modern welfare state, where millions of people are immediately hurt by the federal system grinding to a halt and stopping, would have been anathema to the framers.

So too would have been the dominance of corporate interests in the political system. But here we are.

So too would women, blacks, Asians, and the poor having the right to vote be anathema to them.

Why again do we really care about parsing exactly what the Founders would say about the modern world?

The United States went from a inhospitable backwoods outpost isolated from the entire developed world to the most powerful nation in the world in somewhere around 200 years. These numbers sound larger because we don't live very long but relative to the span of civilizations we are an unimaginable success. Many countries today have e.g. restaurants that predate our country by hundreds of years.

This is important for two reasons. The first is obvious - we did something very right. I don't think there's any single thing you can pinpoint as the secret sauce so I think it's very important to learn from and consider our entire system, its motivations, and rationale in a comprehensive but holistic fashion.

The second reason is perhaps even more important. Do you know what every great superpower before America has in common? They no longer exist. And in many cases not only do they no longer exist, but their former territory is in shambles. It's amazing, and disconcerting, to imagine that Spain was once a global superpower. The point of this is that it's critical to learn from the past, lest we repeat it. The stories may change, but the fundamental problems and decisions that nations face remain quite similar.

In 1910, for 266 years the Qing dynasty had ruled the most populous and, for a substantial period of time, the richest and most sophisticated country in history. Defenders of the dynasty pointed out its illustrious past and how, in the face of trying modern times, China needed to turn back to the traditions that had made it so successful for so long.

How'd that work out?

Same reason you’d want to understand the intent behind the design of a software system before you modify it. Afterwards, though, you still go ahead and modify it to meet new requirements.

Anyway, extending the franchise doesn’t really have anything to do with the prominence of the federal government, whereas the increasing power of corporations does.

The argument is that the modern software system has become so complex, worrying about what the intent of the original design is almost pointless. Say a single-user app that was originally written in assembly for PDP and has now evolved (or wrapped) into a multi-cluster, multi-zoned gRPC service - how important is the original intent when it was never designed for the current use case?

If you want to do good engineering work on a complex system, it's imperative to understand and remain laser-focused on what the system as a whole is actually trying to accomplish. The original intent is never irrelevant in that context. In fact, it's the foundation for evaluating all the subsequent decisions that resulted in "a multi-cluster, multi-zoned gRPC service".

Sure, but why do we hold the Founders in a particularly high regard? Instead of, say, countless 20th and 21st century politicians, scholars, and technocrats who have a lot more influence on the government as it exists today, most of whom who don't have views nearly as revolting as the Founders.

Who's likely to be able to bring a software system from 16.7.1 to 16.7.2? The team who built 16.7.1, or the team who wrote the pre-alpha version twenty years ago?

In many cases (including, I would argue, the current American political system), the people who wrote 16.7.1 are merely technicians without any coherent vision for long term purposes or principles. Why do we still talk about the Unix philosophy?

I follow what's happening in the craft beer world, and some brewers are up in arms due to the fact that the government has to approve labels for all beers that are sold across state lines, or else they could potentially face career ending fines. How on earth did we get from a limited federal government to one that acts as a morality police for beer labels?

That's pretty clearly interstate commerce. Not sure what approval is required, but presumably it at least covers accurate labeling of ABV.

Are craft brewers not capable of measuring ABV? Is the bureaucratic approval of a label any guarantee of a particular ABV for beer bottled using that approved label? Lots of ridiculous BS is contained within an overbroad interpretation of interstate commerce.

So we should leave those things to the states as was originally intended. The courts should never have tolerated the Federal government being allowed to do things which are not specifically enumerated in the first place.

That's where things started breaking down.

The 17th Amendment just made things worse.

As I recall, not even the military, at least not in any way like we're doing it now.

There's nothing stopping Congress from amending the Antideficiency Act or just passing a law that would provide for an automatic fallback appropriation if there's no new budget.

http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/anti-deficiency-act-histor...

Agreed, however as your link discusses there are important reasons the anti-deficiency act was passed.

A permanent fallback appropriation would remove congress’ ability to reallocate or reapportion spending without a 2/3 majority vote in both houses to override the presidential veto, something that seems unlikely in the modern party system.

Also military funding has to be reappropriated regularly under the constitution, a permanent military appropriation is unconstitutional. “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;”

Yes, this is a feature of Westminster systems, although it's actually possible to have a change of government in that situation without having fresh elections if enough MPs "cross the floor" or a coalition flips. We're extremely close to that now in Brexit.

AFAIK - no other western country has these budget limits, if a budget doesn't pass then you continue to work from the old budget, no lack of pay etc

Interestingly that’s how the US worked too until the Carter Administration, and the decision to do it the current way is controversial. It seems like there might actually be nothing stopping us from doing it the same way right now.

Not necessarily. There are examples of stalemates in Europe when government could not be formed in years. For example in Belgium but also other countries. In those cases what would usually happen is there would be an interim government of bureaucrats / experts (university professors etc) appointed to lead the country until new election or until political parties can form some sort of a coalition.

None of these cases meant all government employees went unpaid. It’s not comparable at all.

In the US a significant portion of one of the two major political parties believes that the vast majority of the government fundamentally should not exist. Do other western countries face a similar challenge?

Tell that to the Belgians, who took 541 days to form a government.

The big difference is that in Belgium if the government can't come up with a new budget the old one remains in force. You don't have the annual circus with spending re-authorizations for projects that span multiple budget periods and for infrastructure that needs to be maintained.

That sounds like quite an improvement over our system in the U.S. This budget standoff with a month long shutdown is a disaster.

We have hit the US Constitution slavery provision at this point. Air traffic controllers could just walk.

Civilian employees can just walk. But Coast Guard uniformed personnel don't have that option, and they aren't being paid either.