History House Gov

U.S. Government Shutdowns Data

This skill provides access to historical data about U.S. federal government shutdowns from the House History website (history.house.gov).

Data Source

Due to bot protection (Akamai) on the live history.house.gov website, this skill retrieves data from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which hosts archived snapshots of the official page.

Official source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Shutdown/Government-Shutdowns/

Available Functions

list

List all government shutdowns with optional filtering.

Parameters:

• fiscal_year (optional): Filter by fiscal year (e.g., "1996", "2019")
• min_duration (optional): Minimum duration in days
• max_duration (optional): Maximum duration in days
• procedures_followed (optional): Filter by whether shutdown procedures were followed (true/false)

Example:

{
  "function": "list",
  "min_duration": 10
}

stats

Get summary statistics about all government shutdowns.

Returns:

• Total number of shutdowns
• Total days of shutdowns
• Average, maximum, and minimum durations
• Shutdowns by fiscal year
• Count of procedures followed vs not followed

Example:

{
  "function": "stats"
}

search

Search shutdown records by keyword across all text fields.

Parameters:

• query (required): Search term

Example:

{
  "function": "search",
  "query": "2019"
}

longest

Get the longest government shutdowns, sorted by duration.

Parameters:

• limit (optional): Number of results to return (default: 5)

Example:

{
  "function": "longest",
  "limit": 3
}

Data Fields

Each shutdown record contains:

• Fiscal Year: The fiscal year in which the shutdown occurred
• Date Funding Ended: The date government funding expired
• Duration of Funding Gap (in Days): Length of the shutdown
• Date Funding Restored: The date government operations resumed
• Shutdown Procedures Followed: Whether formal shutdown procedures were implemented
• Legislation Restoring Funding: The bill or resolution that ended the shutdown

Notable Shutdowns

The data includes 20 funding gaps from fiscal years 1977-2019, with the longest being the 34-day shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019.

Footnotes

The original source includes detailed footnotes citing Congressional Research Service reports, newspaper articles, and legal references that provide additional context for each shutdown.

Notes

• Data is retrieved from archived snapshots to bypass bot protection
• The count of 39 mentions in the notes refers to total attempts with failed extractions; this skill successfully parses all 20 shutdown records
• All dates are in U.S. format (Month Day, Year)