Hello my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. As we speak the British

government is still stuck on Brexit but the American government is not just

stuck it is shut.

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slash talking.

I have with me Helen Thompson and Gary Gerstle the last time we were together

was the morning after the night before of the midterm elections and

actually even on that morning it changed quite quickly after we spoke because

it looked a bit better for Trump in the hours after the vote and in the days

that followed it got a bit worse the Senate tightened up a bit though he still

got his majority there but he lost seats in the house at the upper end

actually I think almost beyond the upper end of the worst case scenarios for

him lots of seats in California that hadn't declared yet failed so we now

have that house in place and it is strongly democratic there's a solid

majority there they will talk in a second about how solid the unity is but

one thing that we try and do in this podcast is give a bit of historical

perspective so I'm going to turn to Gary on this to start with US government

shutdowns have become a thing there are relatively recent phenomenon starting

I think in the Reagan years these disputes about the budget often they're

...