The government shutdown: How we got here

(Image credit: (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta))

last updated 8 January 2015

To most Americans, the weeklong government shutdown "came out of nowhere," say Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire in The New York Times. But interviews with influential conservative and an examination of tax and campaign finance records shows that this confrontation is the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo ObamaCare "waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics, and interconnections than is commonly known."

Freedom Partners, a tax-exempt group tied to the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, is one of the primary bankrollers of the defund effort, doling out more than $200 million last year alone to fight ObamaCare. More than half of that money went to the Center to Protect Patient Rights, which then parceled out much of it to other groups.

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The Conservative Action Project, a coalition of activists and organizations led by Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese III, meets in Washington and comes up with a "blueprint to defunding ObamaCare." The original plan is to attach a defunding amendment to a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government after March 27. "Although the Obama administration and others will argue the CR is not the appropriate legislative vehicle to defund ObamaCare, it is easily done through a series of appropriation riders," the blueprint states. The 46 signatories encompass a broad array of fiscal and social conservative groups, including the heads of the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, Tea Party Patriots, and the Traditional Values Coalition.

Heritage Action announces that it will keep of track of how individual representatives vote on Graves' "defund" ObamaCare bill, making it a "key" vote that will affect Republicans' congressional scorecards that Heritage Action puts together at the end of the year. "Representatives should co-sponsor the Defund ObamaCare Act AND tie it to a 'must-pass' bill, such as the year-end funding bill," Heritage Action says.

Meadows sends his letter to Boehner with 79 fellow Republicans as signatories. Heritage Action runs internet ads in the districts of 100 House Republicans who failed to sign Meadows' letter. "They've been hugely influential," says Cook Political Report's David Wasserman. "When else in our history has a freshman member of Congress from North Carolina been able to round up a gang of 80 that's essentially ground the government to a halt?"

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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