Every US Government Shutdown Since 1976: All 23 Funding Gaps, Dates, Duration, Cost

Fiscal year 2026 alone accounts for 120 of the 281 full days of federal funding gaps since 1977, and for the two longest on record. This register lists all 23, with dates, duration, scope, furloughs, cost estimates and the dispute behind each one, from the Congressional Research Service and the House Historian.

Above the table: the current funding deadline with its countdown in Washington and Paris time, and the state of the debt limit. Below it: what the register does and does not show, a component to place a hypothetical shutdown among the 23, and the CSV.

The register: 23 funding gaps, FY1977 to FY2026

What changed after 2018

The register splits in two at the Civiletti opinions. Before 1981, agencies kept working through a lapse and Congress ratified the spending afterwards: the six gaps of 8 to 17 days between 1976 and 1979 closed nothing, as the CRS notes. From 1981 the Antideficiency Act was read strictly, and the gaps became short, usually a weekend, because the cost of a real closure was now visible. Fifteen gaps in the fifteen fiscal years from 1977 to 1991, then a five-year silence.

The second half of the register is a different object. Since 1995 there have been eight gaps, every one of them with shutdown procedures followed, and the three longest all came in the last three cycles: 34 days in 2018-19, 42 in 2025 and 75 in 2026, after 21 in 1995-96 and 16 in 2013. The mechanism is visible in the coverage column. When most agencies are already funded, the lapse costs the negotiators less, and it lasts longer: the 34-day gap of 2018-19 covered 7 of 12 bills, the 75-day gap of 2026 covered one department. The register of every US bank failure since 1934 shows the same concentration pattern in another series: rare events, but larger when they come.

Fiscal year 2026 is the outlier on every column. Three gaps, 120 full days, a government-wide shutdown that cancelled the October 2025 unemployment rate and the October CPI, and a departmental shutdown resolved by a reconciliation law rather than an appropriations act. The CRS report on DHS lapses records two other firsts: salaries of 70,000 law-enforcement staff paid from multi-year reconciliation funds during the lapse, and a department funded in April without two of its largest components, which received their money in June through P.L. 119-98.

A shutdown of how many days? Place it among the 23

The register cannot say how long a gap starting on 12 December 2026 would last. The component takes a duration you choose, ranks it among the 23 gaps since 1976, lists the episodes of comparable length with what is documented about their furloughs and costs, and gives the corresponding end date with the scheduled US releases and Fed meetings that would fall inside the window. It is a hypothesis in your hands, not a forecast.

The current deadline and the debt limit

Fiscal year 2027 began on 1 October 2026 with none of the twelve regular appropriations acts enacted. The Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027 (H.R. 6500) passed the Senate on 8 August by 90 votes to 6 and the House on 1 September by 370 to 48, and was signed on 2 September. It funds the government through 11 December 2026. As of 3 September, the House had passed three of the twelve bills and the Senate none, per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Between fiscal years 2000 and 2023, CRS counts 22 cases where the next CR was enacted the day after the previous one expired, with no full day lost: a deadline is not a gap. The calendar of US data releases and the period each number covers lists what a December lapse would delay; the next US CPI release page flags the October 2025 index that was never published.

The debt limit is the second clock and it is not running out. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 4 July 2025 raised it by $5,000 billion to $41,104 billion. On 17 September 2026 debt subject to the limit was $39,903 billion according to the Daily Treasury Statement, leaving $1,201 billion. No extraordinary measures are in use and neither Treasury nor CBO has published an X-date. The Bipartisan Policy Center, in a note of 4 June 2026 updated on 17 June, expects the limit to be reached between late winter and mid-summer 2027, followed by six to nine months of extraordinary measures; the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote on 7 May 2026 that an increase would be needed in mid-to-late 2027. How Treasury General Account drawdowns inject liquidity during a debt-ceiling episode covers the plumbing that starts once the limit binds; the federal debt to GDP dataset gives the stock behind the flow.

What the register does not show

Three limits. First, duration is a convention. CRS counts full days without budget authority; the House Historian counts through the last day of the shutdown; press counts often include both the expiry day and the reopening day. The same 2025 episode is 42, 43 or 44 days depending on the rule. This register uses CRS throughout and prints the House count where it differs.

Second, furlough numbers are estimates and not comparable across rows. No official count exists for any lapse, CRS notes, because furloughed workers who are paid retroactively are recorded as employed. The 1995 figure is a contemporaneous estimate, the 2013 figure is OMB’s peak daily count, the 2018-19 figure is a Senate committee projection, the 2025 figure is a Bipartisan Policy Center estimate cited by CRS, and the 2026 DHS figure is the planned number in the department’s contingency plan, which was not updated during the lapse.

Third, the dispute column is a label, not a cause. Before 1996 it rests on the press accounts cited by CRS and the House Historian; from 1996 it follows the CRS narrative. My criterion is explicit: one gap per CRS row, one dispute per gap, the issue named in the source that ended it. If a later CRS revision changes a row, the register follows it.

Method and sources

The register reproduces Table 1 of CRS report RS20348, Federal Funding Gaps: A Brief Overview, updated 26 May 2026, row for row, and adds five fields. Scope, shutdown procedures and the restoring law come from the House Historian’s page Funding Gaps and Shutdowns in the Federal Government, read on 19 September 2026. Furloughs and costs come from CRS RS20348, CRS R48832 on the economic effects of the 2025 shutdown, CRS R49105 on DHS lapses, OMB’s November 2013 report on the costs of the October 2013 shutdown, CBO’s report of 28 January 2019 and its letter of 29 October 2025, and the DHS lapse plan of 29 September 2025. The macro regime of the month in which each gap began comes from the Eco3min regime classifier, monthly since 1978, flagged degraded before 2003; the four gaps of 1976 and 1977 have no regime. The deadline, the CR votes and the debt-limit figures come from the White House statement of 2 September 2026, CRFB’s Appropriations Watch and the Daily Treasury Statement (Fiscal Data API, table IIIC).

Questions about the register

Last updated — 19 September 2026