At least a partial government shutdown will occur this weekend, with many government agencies laying off workers temporarily next week, or asking employees to work without pay until new funding is passed to keep the government operating beyond this Sunday October 1.
The issue is, we’ve all seen this movie before. The United States has experienced 21 gaps in government funding since 1976, leading to varying degrees of disruption. Under a worst-case scenario, the White House is warily eyeing a repeat of 2018, the longest and most recent shutdown, which sidelined roughly 800,000 of the federal government’s 2.1 million employees for 34 days.
The White House has begun advising federal agencies to prepare for a government shutdown as Republican lawmakers have shown no signs of progress in negotiations to keep the government funded beyond this week.
While much remains uncertain about how inevitable a shutdown may be or how long one may last, the broad contours of how it would play out are well-worn territory in Washington, and most agencies have readied plans for working through the tumult.
A government shutdown amounts to a suspension of many government operations until Congress acts to restore funding. For hundreds of thousands of federal employees, that means either being furloughed while the government is closed or continuing to work without pay. Workers will be made whole after the shutdown ends and funds are available to pay them.
For the public, that typically means dealing with interruptions to a variety of government services and facing a range of inconveniences and disruptions to daily life. But we’ve seen these shutdowns before, and we’ve survived them all.
And let us not forget that most of these threatened shutdowns have been averted before they started with last-minute stop-gap spending measures to avoid them. Yet most politicos don’t expect that to happen this time around as GOP House Speaker Mike McCarthy and Democrats appear far away from an agreement to extend government funding.
We’ll see what happens but as it stands now, it looks like a partial government shutdown will begin this Sunday. There’s no clear path ahead as lawmakers return with tensions high and options limited. The House is expected to vote Tuesday evening on a package of bills to fund parts of the government, but it’s not at all clear that McCarthy has the support needed to move ahead with a plan to reinstate all government funding.
Meanwhile, the Senate, trying to stave off a federal closure, is preparing its own bipartisan plan for a stopgap measure to buy some time and keep offices funded past Saturday’s deadline as work in Congress continues. But plans to tack on additional Ukraine aid have run into trouble as a number of Republicans in both the House and Senate oppose spending more money on the war effort.
Against the mounting chaos, President Joe Biden warned the Republican conservatives to back off their hardline tactics, saying funding the federal government is “one of the most basic fundamental responsibilities of Congress.”
Biden implored the House Republicans not to renege on the debt deal he struck earlier this year with McCarthy, which set the federal government funding levels and was signed into law after approval by both the House and Senate.
“We made a deal, we shook hands, and said this is what we’re going to do. Now, they’re reneging on the deal,” Biden said late Monday.
A government shutdown would disrupt the US economy and the lives of millions of Americans who work for the government or rely on federal services — from air traffic controllers who would be asked to work without pay to some 7 million people in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, including half the babies born in the US, who could lose access to nutritional benefits, according to the White House. Realistically, however, this is unlikely to happen.
It comes against the backdrop of the 2024 elections as Donald Trump, the leading Republican to challenge Biden, is egging on the Republicans in Congress to “shut it down” and undo the deal McCarthy made with Biden.
“Unless you get everything, shut it down!” Trump wrote in all capital letters on social media. “It’s time Republicans learned how to fight!”
After the House Rules Committee met last Saturday to prepare for this week’s voting, McCarthy was hopeful the latest plan on a package of four bills, to fund Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and State and Foreign Operations, would kickstart the process.
“Let’s get this going,” McCarthy said. “Let’s make sure the government stays open while we finish our job passing all the individual bills.”
But at least one top Trump ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)., who is also close to McCarthy, said she would be a “hard no” on the vote to open debate, because the package of bills continues to provide at least $300 million for the war in Ukraine, which most Republicans oppose.
While their numbers are just a handful, the hard-right Republican faction holds oversized sway because the House majority is narrow and McCarthy needs almost every vote from his side for partisan bills without Democratic support.
As this is written, it is impossible to know if a government shutdown actually happens next week. If the past is prelude, something will happen at the last minute to avert it. But if that doesn’t happen, as I noted above, we’ve seen this movie before, and we’ll get through it.
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