United States

After an October 1 deadline passed with the House and Senate failing to agree on a continuing resolution bill for the federal budget, the federal government partially shut down for the first time in 17 years, furloughing several hundred thousand federal employees and closing numerous government offices as well as national parks and other public lands. For weeks, most congressional Republicans, led by those associated with the Tea Party movement, had sought to include in the continuing resolution a one-year delay in funding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; referred to by both parties as Obamacare), many of the provisions of which took effect on October 1. At the final hour the House Republican majority continued to refuse to rescind that requirement, while the Senate Democratic majority was steadfast in its rejection of it, forcing the government shutdown. On October 16—with political brinkmanship again having brought the government to the limit of the national debt ceiling and with the United States facing the possibility of a default that some feared might spark a global economic crisis—moderate Republicans voted with Democrats in both houses of Congress to pass a bill that fully reopened the government by funding it through January 15, 2014, extended national borrowing until February 7, and set up a committee tasked with arriving at longer-term budgetary solutions. The only change to Obamacare contained in the bill was a minor alteration to the procedures for verifying incomes for some people obtaining subsidized insurance.

The Obamacare rollout

The government shutdown temporarily diverted attention from an early October rollout of Obamacare that went badly awry. HealthCare.gov—the Web site that was established as a clearinghouse of information, a marketplace for insurance plans, and the place to apply for health coverage for those in 36 states—initially performed miserably. During its first weeks it operated slowly, erratically, or simply crashed, and far fewer users were able to access the site, much less apply for insurance, than had been hoped. In late October the Obama administration ordered a “tech surge” to address those problems, but progress in overcoming the glitches was slow, providing Republicans, who had borne the brunt of public dissatisfaction with the government shutdown, the opportunity to lambast the Web site in particular as well as Obamacare and the Obama administration in general. As HealthCare.gov’s performance improved, Obama went on the offensive, encouraging Americans to sign up for coverage and seeking to bolster his plummeting approval ratings. At the beginning of April 2014, after the end of the first open enrollment period, he would be able to announce that 7.1 million Americans had signed up for private insurance plans through the marketplace, meeting the administration’s target.

HealthCare.govA screenshot of the federally run HealthCare.gov site as it appeared on November 29, 2013.Jon Elswick/AP Images

The Iran nuclear deal, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, and the Ukraine crisis

The world’s focus shifted in November 2013 to Geneva, where the United States, the other permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, France, China, and Russia), and Germany (collectively referred to as the P5+1) entered into an interim agreement with Iran that placed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities for six months in exchange for a temporary reduction in the sanctions that had been imposed upon Iran by the international community. Meanwhile, negotiators worked toward a comprehensive final agreement.

Before the end of 2013, the House (by a vote of 332–94) and the Senate (64–36) passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, based on a compromise forged by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, the chairpersons of the House and Senate Budget Committees, respectively. The act replaced the bulk of the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration with targeted cuts, and it raised discretionary spending (split equally between military and nonmilitary funding). The resulting budget was intended to last through fiscal year 2014 and forestall another battle in January 2014, when the temporary budget agreement forged in October was due to expire (provided that the details of the budget could be worked out before then). A number of conservative congressional Republicans opposed the spending increases and called for the sequester-level cuts to remain in place, while many Democrats were disappointed because the act did not extend long-term unemployment benefits.