In 1995-1996, the United States government shutdown twice due to a disagreement between then House Speaker, Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton. The most recent shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, is different in many ways; the biggest difference being lack of communication between president Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner, according to CNN.
The senate and the GOP will not be able to come to an agreement on funding if the Boehner and Obama don't communicate with each other, a big difference in the 1995-96 shutdowns, where Clinton and Gingrich talked daily, CNN reported.
"We would talk five days a week before the shutdown, after the shutdowns we met face to face for 35 days in the White House trying to hammer things out. When you get to know somebody, even when you're fighting hard, you kind of understand where the other person is coming from and they're not some demonized figure," Gingrich told CNN.
"The biggest difference I sense between the Obama-Boehner relationship and the Clinton-Gingrich relationship is just simply frequency of conversation," Gingrich said on his show "Crossfire".
Although they almost reached an agreement in 2011 on budget and taxes, the deal fell through in last minute and Boehner and Obama haven't spent much time together since, according to CNN.
CNN reports another big difference is the partisan division between Republicans and Democrats. Both Parties are farther apart than ever before, even though the Congress was more partisan in more than 100 years in 1995-96.
The economy is also very different now than in 1995-96. Back then, the economy was booming because of Silicon Valley and unemployment was at 5.6 percent. The same can not be said of the current economy, which is on the road to a slow recovery with unemployment at 7.3 percent.
