On Friday night, U.S. politicians could not reach a deal on the budget necessitating a government shutdown.
The biggest impact of the shutdown would see almost a million U.S. federal employees being told to stay home, while also not collecting a paycheque.
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This is not the first time the U.S. government has gone through a shutdown.
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The first occurred in 1976, while the most recent shutdown began on Oct. 1, 2013 and lasted for 17 days until an interim appropriations bill was passed.
While the results were the same, a different cast of characters were behind the most recent shutdown.
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In 2013, several Tea Party senators led a charge to defund Obamacare. While the president was a Democrat, Barack Obama, the Republicans controlled the House as the Democrats held a similar majority to what the current Republicans hold in the Senate.
Current U.S. President Donald Trump has naturally placed the blame for the current shutdown on the Democrats.
Similar to the current shutdown, where blame can be placed on all sides, depending on whom a person supports, Trump believed one man was to blame in 2013: Obama.
During a Fox & Friends interview in 2013, he said Obama was ultimately responsible.
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“Well, if you say who gets fired it always has to be the top,” Trump said. “I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top and the president’s the leader. And he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead.”
He said that in the future, “when they talk about the government shutdown, they’re going to be talking about the president of the United States, who the president was at that time.”
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“They’re not going to be talking about who was the head of the House, the head the Senate, who’s running things in Washington,” Trump said.
Two years earlier, there was another near-shutdown. Trump had a one-on-one with NBC’s Meredith Vieira at the time, and spoke of the situation.
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Vieira asked whether he was in favour of partial shutdown and Trump responded, “In my opinion — you know, I hear the Democrats are going to be blamed and the Republicans are going to be blamed. I actually think the president would be blamed. If there is a shutdown, and it’s not going to be a horrible shutdown because, as you know, things will sort of keep going…. If there is a shutdown I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one that has to get people together.”
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