On Wednesday last week, the longest federal government shutdown in American history ended as U.S. President Donald Trump signed a congressional resolution funding the government until January. This move allowed hundreds of thousands of federal employees to return to work, brought U.S. airspace back up to capacity before the busy Thanksgiving weekend and ensured that 42 million Americans would receive food stamps for the month of November. However, the underlying motivations for the shutdown and the broader conflict between Trump and congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats have not disappeared. It is entirely possible that another shutdown will occur once the current funding bill expires in January.
In the U.S., government shutdowns happen when both houses of Congress, the legislature, and the president fail to enact appropriations legislation, which allows the federal government to spend money. Federal shutdowns have been occurring since 1980, when Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued an opinion stating that “non-essential” agencies and offices must shut down when they experience a funding gap. Since then, shutdowns have occurred somewhat regularly, with both political parties using it as a political tool: since the presidency of Jimmy Carter, only two presidents (George W. Bush and Joe Biden) have avoided shutdowns during their terms. Shutdowns usually occur when the party controlling Congress is different from the president’s party, and these two actors cannot agree on where money should be spent. Shutdowns only end once Congress and the president reach a compromise and pass appropriations legislation to re-fund the government.
In this case (as well as with the 2018 shutdown), however, the Democratic party does not control either the presidency or either house of Congress. Democrats in the Senate (the upper house) have managed to block Republican-drafted appropriations bills through an arcane rule called the filibuster. While only a majority of 50 senators out of 100 is theoretically needed to pass a bill, 60 votes are needed to invoke cloture, or end debate. In practice, this means that a minority with at least 40 senators can keep debate going as long as they want and effectively kill any legislation (except for certain types which can avoid the filibuster) that they disagree with. Since the 2024 Senate elections, Democrats have controlled 47 seats, allowing them to take advantage of the filibuster rule.
Last March, enough Democrats did not invoke the filibuster on a vote to continue funding the government until October. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who voted for the spending measure, reasoned that forcing a government shutdown would give President Trump more power to fire federal workers or eliminate agencies whose existence he disagreed with. Schumer was heavily criticized by Democrats and leftist groups for this concession-many on the left wanted to force shutdown as a means to more vocally oppose Trump and the unprecedented moves he has taken in his second term. Schumer was castigated for facilitating the funding of the government and faced criticism that he was not a “fighter”. As the autumn fiscal deadline approached, the pressure on Schumer and Senate Democrats to force a shutdown made some kind of shutdown essentially unavoidable.
Senate Democrats settled on extending expanded Affordable Care Act (ACA/Obamacare) subsidies as their key demand for their votes to continue funding the government. The basic subsidies had been in place since 2010, when President Obama, a Democrat, signed the ACA into law. These subsidies effectively limited health insurance spending to between 2.07% and 9.38% of household income for households making under 400% of the federal poverty level. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 eliminated the income cap and limited the insurance spending share to below 8.5% for all households. Many Democrats have long wanted to make these expanded subsidies permanent, but settled for an extension to 2025 in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In the lead-up to the funding expiration, Senate Democrats demanded the extension of the subsidies, at least for another year. However, many on the online left postulated that the healthcare focus served as a proxy for a different concern, namely the regular disobedience of Congress and expansion of the executive practiced by Trump.
On September 19, the House, under full Republican control, passed a spending bill which did not include funding for the expanded subsidies; this version failed in Senate after moderate Republicans voted against it (notably, fiscal conservatives such as Thomas Massie and Rand Paul have consistently opposed the funding bills, as they substantially increase the federal deficit). A competing, Democrat-backed funding resolution also failed in the Senate. On September 29, the day before government funding expired, Trump met with Democratic congressional leaders (Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader) to negotiate a way to avoid the shutdown. The negotiations did not arrive at a successful conclusion, and later that night, Trump posted an AI-generated video mocking the two Democratic leaders. This move effectively ended negotiations. The next day, the Senate voted on two opposing funding bills: the Democratic proposal was defeated on party lines, while the Republican proposal gained a 51-47 majority but failed to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold. All Republicans except Rand Paul of Kentucky, as well as two Democrats (Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania) and one Democrat-affiliated independent (Angus King of Maine) voted for the Republican proposal. After the Senate failed to adopt a funding resolution, the government officially shut down at midnight.
Initially, the impact of the shutdown was muted. Almost 900,000 federal employees were furloughed (temporarily suspended without pay) but “essential workers” at most agencies continued working without pay. On October 24, the Department of Defense accepted a $130 million donation from “reclusive billionaire” Timothy Mellon, allowing military service members to receive their paychecks. However, three days later, the Department of Agriculture announced that no Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments, commonly known as food stamps, would be awarded for the month of November. This was despite the fact that the federal government had enough usable money to fund the program, at least partially, for another month. Several states sued the federal government to force spending on SNAP benefits. A federal district judge in Rhode Island issued an order forcing such payments, but the Supreme Court paused the order. As the shutdown continued, the more than 40 million Americans on SNAP, around 40% of whom are children, were largely forced to turn to food banks for meals. In fact, some U.S. military personnel here in Germany were directed to seek assistance from German food banks and charitable organizations amidst uncertainty about their mid-November paychecks. Furthermore, on November 7, major U.S. airports experienced flight reductions as part of the Department of Transportation’s plan to relieve pressure on unpaid air traffic controllers.
As the pain of the shutdown mounted, real negotiations began to reopen the government, culminating in a final vote on an amended Republican spending proposal on November 9. Nine Democratic senators—Dick Durbin, Angus King, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman and Tim Kaine—voted with all Republicans except Rand Paul to reopen the government. The proposal passed contained some concessions to the moderate Democrats, such as funding SNAP all the way through next September, but notably did not include funding for the expanded ACA subsidies. Instead, congressional Republican leaders promised to hold a vote on the subsidies in December. The amended Republican proposal quickly passed the House (with almost all Democrats voting against) and was signed into law on November 12, officially ending the shutdown. Full government services resumed within days.
The underlying issues, however, have not been fully addressed. Many Democrats are once again furious at Schumer and the Senate Democratic Caucus for what they perceive as a “surrender”, allowing the government to reopen without securing an extension of the ACA subsidies. Adding complexity to the whole situation is the fact that most opinion polls show voters blaming Republicans over Democrats for the shutdown. Indeed, in off-year elections on November 4, Democrats scored large victories in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, suggesting that the shutdown was politically damaging for Republicans. Once the next deadline in January arrives, Schumer may be once again forced to initiate a shutdown. Already, some congressional Democrats are pushing for his resignation. Whether the Trump administration can achieve fiscal stability by the midterm elections remains unknown, but so far the financial picture has been extremely tumultuous and driven by partisan politics to an unprecedented level.
