Shutdown avoided but Congress must raise debt ceiling

Headline UNITED STATES: Government shutdown averted

Actors, Partisan Inclination, and Emotions: An Analysis of Government Shutdown News Stories Shared on Twitter

Scholars have recognized emotion as an increasingly important element in the reception and retransmission of online information. In the United States, because of existing differences in ideology, among both audiences and producers of news stories, political issues are prone to spark considerable emotional responses online. While much research has explored emotional responses during election campaigns, this study focuses on the role of online emotion in social media posts related to day-to-day governance in between election periods. Specifically, this study takes the 2018–2019 government shutdown as its subject of investigation. The data set shows the prominence of journalistic and political figures in leading the discussion of news stories, the nuance of emotions employed in the news frames, and the choice of pro-attitudinal news sharing.

Fiscal Rules as Bargaining Chips

Most fiscal rules can be overridden by consensus. We show that this does not make them ineffectual. Since fiscal rules determine the outside option in case of disagreement, the opposition uses them as “bargaining chips” to obtain spending concessions. We show that under some conditions this political bargain mitigates the debt accumulation problem. We analyze various rules and find that when political polarization is high, harsh fiscal rules (e.g., government shutdown) maximize the opposition’s bargaining power and lead to lower debt accumulation. When polarization is low, less strict fiscal limits (e.g, balanced-budget rule) are preferable. Moreover, we find that the optimal fiscal rules could arise in equilibrium by negotiation. Finally, by insuring against power fluctuations, negotiable rules yield higher welfare than hard ones.

US government shutdown risk is lower, for now

Headline UNITED STATES: Shutdown risk is lower, for now

US government shutdown unlikely as new justice comes

Headline UNITED STATES: Shutdown unlikely as new justice comes

A US government shutdown is likely to be avoided

Headline UNITED STATES: Government shutdown should be avoidable

Participants’ Experiences of the 2018–2019 Government Shutdown and Subsequent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Benefit Disruption Can Inform Future Policy

The federal government shutdown from 22 December 2018 to 25 January 2019 created an unprecedented disruption in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. We conducted a cross-sectional qualitative study to begin to capture how the disruption affected food security and wellbeing among a small sample of California SNAP participants. We collected data from 26 low-income adults in four focus groups in four diverse California counties. We found that participants routinely struggle to secure an adequate and healthy diet in the context of high costs of living, the shutdown and benefit disruption added to participants’ stress and uncertainty and exacerbated food insecurity, and it diminished some participants’ faith in government. Participants reported that, while having additional benefits in January felt like a relief from typical end-of-month deprivation, the subsequent extended gap between benefit distributions and a lack of clarity about future benefits caused cascading effects as participants later had to divert money from other expenses to buy food and faced added uncertainty about future economic stability. Additionally, the shutdown highlighted challenges related to the availability, timing, and tone of communications between participants and SNAP agencies. Participants recommended that SNAP adjust benefit and eligibility levels to better address costs of living, improve customer service, and avoid future disruptions.

Fears of third Trump-era US government shutdown rising

Headline UNITED STATES: Third shutdown fears are rising