Law Commons^™

Confronting Chaos: The Fiscal Constitution Faces Federal Shutdowns And (Almost) Debt Defaults, Charles Tiefer

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent events raise the question of whether two near-failures in what scholars call the "Fiscal Constitution" may plunge the government into paralysis or chaos. In October 2013, a lapse in congressional appropriations shut the government down for two weeks. The shutdown furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal employees. It caused some agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS"), virtually to close their doors and to curtail their services.

Simultaneously, and potentially even more devastating, the House of Representatives (alternatively "House") firmly refused during an extremely tense countdown to raise the statutory debt ceiling of the government. When the government …