Different presidents, same fight against containment: Trump and Obama adopted opposing approaches

President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama are polar opposites in many ways, but, like everyone who has sat behind the Resolute Desk, they share some similarities.

One thing the two have in common is overseeing government shutdowns – one under Obama and two under Trump. And even in this sparse similarity, the two men acted differently, especially during the last 43-day shutdown.

While both congressional battles centered on Obamacare, Obama made its shutdown the center of attention, while Trump kept it at arm’s length.

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President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama handled their respective shutdowns differently, although health care proved to be a common thread in both cases. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Debra L Rothenberg/WireImage)

Romina Boccia, director of fiscal policy and social rights at the Cato Institute, told Fox News Digital that a major difference in the Obama and Trump administrations’ approaches to their respective shutdowns was that in 2013, Obama wanted the pain of the shutdown to be felt by Americans, while Trump kept the focus focused on Washington, DC.

“During the Obama shutdown, it was more about making it extremely visible, shutting down beloved functions — even though it wasn’t necessary — that affect average Americans,” she said.

Boccia worked at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation at the time and recalled the barricades that were quickly erected around Washington, D.C.’s many national parks.

These barricades, both concrete and human, extended beyond the nation’s capital and were placed around hundreds of national parks across America as a stark reminder that the government was shut down.

Boccia noted that a direct comparison of the two shutdowns would be difficult given their different durations, but that the Trump administration, at least initially, sought to inflict direct pain on congressional Democrats and the federal government.

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A welcome sign is seen in Yosemite National Park, California, December 13, 2023. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

This was accomplished largely by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who ordered mass layoffs of unemployed workers and withheld or canceled billions in federal funding for blue cities and states.

“It’s not that it wasn’t a shutdown, it’s just that the choices the administration made were an attempt to focus the impacts of stopping this cycle on the government itself,” Brittany Madni, executive vice president of the Center for Economic Policy Innovation, told Fox News Digital.

“It was staged by President Obama,” Madni continued. “And if you look at what happened over the last 40 days, it was exactly the same scenario from Democrats in Congress.”

Madni argued that discussions and debates during the 2013 shutdown were largely centered in Washington, DC. The latest shutdown saw some of that, but it also saw Trump continue to work on trade deals, particularly during his high-profile visit to Asia, which was a point of contention for Democrats on the Hill.

“He was doing his job,” Madni said. “He was doing his job. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress, quite simply, weren’t doing it.”

Yet there was a common thread in both shutdowns: Obamacare.

In 2013, congressional Republicans wanted to dismantle Obama’s signature bill. Quickly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., led his caucus in promoting the extension of Obamacare’s enhanced subsidies.

Boccia said that played a big role in why Obama was at the forefront of his shutdown.

“He was front and center in the media talking about the closure, and because it was because of his heritage,” she said.

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Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer after a press conference at the U.S. Capitol, November 5, 2025. (Tom Williams/Getty Images)

It was because his major legislative achievements were criticized that Obama played such a central role in the shutdown, Boccia argued, but for Trump, who tried during his first administration to gut and replace Obamacare, it was not a priority.

“The fact that it was the Obamacare COVID credits, I think, made the president less necessary and perhaps less interested in being the face of the shutdown,” she said. “It was really a battle in Congress.”

Madni disagrees that the latest shutdown was not a direct attempt by congressional Democrats to attack one of his legislative accomplishments.

Before the decisive failure in the Senate vote in late September that marked the start of the longest shutdown in history, Democrats proposed a counterproposal that would have removed several provisions from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which has so far been the legislative capstone of his second term.

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“It’s really important for everyone to remember that the grant request was just one request in a long list of radical and incredibly expensive ideas that totaled $1.5 trillion,” Madni said. “Another item on that list was dismantling key parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

“If these were truly grants, then Democrats would have been willing at any time in the last 43 days to adjust their demands and settle for grants,” she continued. “Not once have they done it.”