There is no record in comparative literature of anything like that caused by the Legislative-Executive impasse. The current one lasted 43 days and was the . The implications are severe: paralysis of services and temporary layoffs of employees.
In the last 30 years there have been six shutdowns. It is, therefore, a rare event, but one that has intensified. The point of contention was the cuts to food and health programs for 2026, and the protagonists were the Democratic senators. Interestingly, the country is divided and there are no clear winners in the episode: 47% attribute the shutdown to , while 50% blame the Democrats.
In the last fifty years, Congress has only approved “the budget” according to the scheduled schedule on four occasions. Another American specificity is that there is not exactly one budget law, but twelve, approved by the twelve sectoral budget subcommittees (appropriations) of the Senate and the Chamber. Most of the time, only part of the twelve are approved. Only in recent decades have they been integrated into a broad bus law. The official deadline to vote on them is October 1st, but in the last 15 years, the deadline has only been met twice!
Unlike Brazil and some other countries, failure to approve the budget does not lead to the automatic execution of expenditure from the previous year’s budget. For this to happen, Congress will have to approve continuing resolutions (CRs).
From a comparative point of view, the shutdown is an anomaly. But in reality, the fact that the Legislative Branch can suspend spending in such a forceful way signals its strength, . Conflicts are not uncommon (except under one-party parliamentarism, where by definition they do not exist). When the Executive Branch is a minority in a multi-party parliamentary context, the solution takes the form of “supply and confidence agreements”, agreements whereby the majority opposition refrains from using its prerogative to approve a motion of no confidence and overthrow the government. This has been the rule rather than the exception in Scandinavian countries, Ireland, etc.
The scarce budgetary powers of American presidents, in a context in which the budget is globally imposing and mostly non-authorizing, as in the Brazilian case, contrasts with the way the presidency has been exercised. Congressional control over the budget took on its current form in 1974 after the constitutional crisis in , which unilaterally restricted expenses approved by the Legislature. From that year onwards, any contingency proposal must be approved by Congress within 30 days. Unlike the Brazilian case, until the impositional amendments (ECs 86/2015 and 100/2019) the American president “cannot stop spending”. The bottom line is why the system does not degenerate into a predatory pattern.
The long shutdown was the Democratic senators’ strategy to, in a house dominated by Republicans, express their fierce opposition to Trump, in a context in which they have been criticized as inert in the face of the tsunami caused by the new government.
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