Yes, Lewinsky flashed her thong at the president on the second day of the government shutdown. (Tina Thorpe/FX) OK, but what about the thong? Lewinsky, who had been working out of an office in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building, was now in the West Wing, working alongside key administration figures - including the president himself. The staff at the White House was reduced from more than 430 to about 90, and unpaid interns were used to fill in the gap. Non-essential government workers were furloughed during the shutdown. It also enabled one of the biggest political scandals in modern American history by bringing Lewinsky, who was about to start a paid job in the White House office of legislative affairs, into close quarters with the president for the first time. The impasse foreshadowed the increasingly dysfunctional partisan political atmosphere we now take for granted in Washington, DC. (A second shutdown that December lasted three weeks.) Gingrich - who was also miffed that Clinton hadn’t talked to him about the budget on the plane back from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral - refused to raise the debt limit, and the federal government was forced to partially shut down for five days starting Nov. ![]() In November 1995, Clinton vetoed a budget that would have reduced funding for Medicare and education. In the 1994 midterm election, the Republicans regained control of Congress for the first time in 40 years in what was dubbed the “Republican Revolution.” Led by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his “Contract With America,” the GOP pushed for sharp spending cuts. But it probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere if it weren’t for the government shutdown
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