The highs and lows of US debt ceilings
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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.