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       Senate Republicans have warned that a new stop-gap funding measure could become necessary to avert another US government shutdown on 19 January 2024.

       Minority leader Mitch McConnell said it was “obvious” that another continuing resolution (or CR) was required to grant bipartisan negotiators in the House and Senate more time to agree on the 12 appropriation bills needed to fund the government for the 2024 financial year and for Congress to enact the legislation.

       His deputy John Thune had already warned that a CR lasting until at least March was necessary to allow Republicans and Democrats in both chambers to resolve their differences.

       Without one, funding for federal programmes involving transportation, housing, agriculture, energy, veterans and military construction will expire on 19 January and other departments, including defence, on 2 February.

       The prospect of having to sign off on a fresh CR represents a potential problem for the new Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, who took up the gavel with a pledge to oppose such temporary accommodations and prioritise long-term funding deals and substantial policy reforms instead, wary of repeating the compromises that led to the ousting of his predecessor Kevin McCarthy by a fractious caucus last October.

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       Mr McConnell’s comments follow Speaker Johnson and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer agreeing a $1.59 trillion discretionary spending bill for the new financial year, which began on 1 October 2023.

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       That deal was applauded by President Joe Biden but has already met with opposition from hard-line Republicans, who refuse to sign without extracting policy concessions, notably fresh restrictions at the US-Mexico border, making life difficult in full knowledge of the coming deadlines – precisely the sort of entrenchment strategy that held Congress to ransom in the autumn and led to Mr McCarthy’s downfall.

       “If they totally botch it, we get no policy reforms, and we spend $1.66 trillion, I don’t know why we would keep him as speaker,” Texas congressman Chip Roy has already said of Mr Johnson, threatening more trouble up ahead.

       Here’s a look at some of the key questions surrounding government shutdowns, a recurrent threat looming over Congress whenever the parties of the left and right cannot find common ground on how to bankroll the great offices of state.

       What is a government shutdown?

       Under the Antideficiency Act, which was passed in 1884 and amended in 1950, US government departments and federal agencies cannot spend or commit money without the approval of Congress.

       Its authority was reinforced in 1980 when Jimmy Carter’s attorney general Benjamin Civiletti ruled that its word was gospel and that no funding agreement meant no spending, leaving no further room for interpretation.

       The House and Senate therefore need to assess the budget requests submitted by individual departments and agencies and agree on the 12 appropriation bills that apportion a full year’s worth of funding to those offices before a given deadline, with the spending packages having to pass through both chambers before they can reach the Resolute Desk to be signed off by President Biden.

       If Congress passes the appropriation bills, the clock is reset for another year and everyone can rest easily.

       If it cannot, those departments and agencies affected must cease all non-essential functions until a deal is in place.

       If all of the dozen bills are caught up in partisan squabbling, a complete government shutdown takes place.

       But if some can be agreed to, leaving only a few offices required to close their doors, a partial shutdown is the result.

       What happens if the government has to shut down?

       During federal shutdowns, government employees are told not to report for work and placed on furlough – although, since 2019, they are now paid retroactively when the impasse comes to an end, rather than forced to lose out on wages altogether.

       The state of play does not apply to those whose jobs are considered essential for public safety, such as law enforcement officers, soldiers, air traffic controllers, medical personnel, power grid technicians or those responsible for administering social security, Medicare and Medicaid payments.

       In 1981, Mr Civiletti ruled that a president should be free to go about his or her constitutional duties even if a shutdown is ongoing, an argument that has since been extended to court employees, members of Congress and aides who support them in their essential activities.

       The bureaucratic consequences of such an outage can be considerable, however, particularly if the shutdown lasts for a significant length of time, with applications for passports, driving licences, student loans and tax refunds going unprocessed, food assistance programmes paused, inspections neglected and national parks closed.

       But the state is prepared for just such an eventuality and the White House Office of Management and Budget posts detailed contingency plans for agencies to follow in the event of a shutdown and a 51-page question-and-answer guide to protocol, micromanaging the situation and stipulating which buildings must turn off their lights and computers.

       How common are they in Washington?

       While shutdowns can theoretically happen in any country that has a federal system of government rather than a parliamentary one, it typically only occurs in dramatic cases of revolution, invasion or other disaster and remains a peculiarly American problem.

       This is because it is only really in Washington that the two chambers of Congress can be controlled by political parties other than that of the president, intended as a safeguard against authoritarianism.

       There have been at least 10 shutdowns in DC in the last 40 years, although only four of those were of any real length.

       Bill Clinton’s bitter battles with a GOP-dominated House and Senate in 1995 and 1996 yielded two, meaning 26 days were lost in total as a result of feuding.

       Barack Obama suffered another in 2013 when a stand-off over his Affordable Care Act resulted in a 16-day outage.

       Then another erupted under Donald Trump from 21 December 2018 to 25 January 2019 over funding his (still far from complete) wall at the southern border, a 35-day partial shutdown in which five of the 12 appropriation bills were passed, allowing some agencies to remain open.

       As for how significant all of this is for the US economy, according to one Goldman Sachs estimate a shutdown typically eats into America’s gross domestic product by 0.2 per cent for each week it lasts.

       In the case of the Trump-era shutdown, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that it cost the cost the economy 0.1 per cent growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 (or around $3bn) and 0.2 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2019 (or $8bn).

       More about Congress Senate House of Representatives government shutdown Mitch McConnell John Thune Mike Johnson Chuck Schumer Bill Clinton Barack Obama Donald Trump Affordable Care Act Joe Biden Kevin McCarthy Jimmy Carter congressional budget office Republicans

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       1/ 1What is a government shutdown and why do they happen?

       What is a government shutdown and why do they happen?

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