The highs and lows of US debt ceilings
Infamous debt ceiling battles
Raising the debt ceiling resulted in two shutdowns of the federal government, in late 1995 and early 1996.
In 2011, a debt ceiling crisis rippled across the financial markets, prompting Standard & Poor’s to issue the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating. A second debt-ceiling face-off occurred in 2013 between then-President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans as part of a doomed GOP effort to undo the Affordable Care Act. It resulted in the cap being suspended for the first time.