The Government Shutdown at Day 40: Where are we and how did we get here?
Democrats demand a revised bill that extends health care subsidies and House Republicans refuse to negotiate until after Democrats approve their plan. A deal might extend the stalemate or win D votes.
On October 1 funding for many federal government programs expired, and 40 days later Congress still has not reached an agreement on how to proceed. This has never happened before for so long.
About half of federal government employees are still working, including federal police like ICE, TSA, and air traffic controllers, the military, and staff deemed essential throughout the government. But those workers won’t get paid until the shutdown ends, and it’s legally dubious that many should be working at all. Payments out of a contingency fund for SNAP, the food assistance program, are only covering part of SNAP’s benefits and recent payments may be clawed back (the Supreme Court also ruled on it). That’s all because the Constitution requires that federal dollars are only spent when a law is enacted to authorize it, and the last laws authorizing all this spending expired on September 30.
To end the shutdown, Republicans must find at least 8 Democrats in the Senate to agree on an “appropriations” bill for either short-term funding (called a “continuing resolution”) or year-long funding.
Republicans proposed to continue Trump-level funding until November 21, which would include the major increase in spending on immigration enforcement, major cuts to foreign aid, student loans, and food and medical benefits for the poor, and workforce reductions throughout much of the federal government that Republicans enacted during the year. The time until November 21 was to be used to negotiate full-year appropriations bills (which should have already been enacted before the fiscal year ended, ideally).
Democrats have said that they would agree to that with 1) an extension to expiring health insurance subsidies for middle-class families and 2) a guarantee that Republicans won’t break the deal in the middle of the fiscal year (again). More on all that below.
Senate Republicans offered to hold a vote on extending the subsidies, but they didn’t offer to vote for it. Democrats didn’t accept the symbolic offer, but negotiations in the Senate continue. House Republicans in any case said they would not negotiate until the shutdown ended. (Democrats didn’t ask for funding for illegal immigrants, contrary to lies from the other side.)
Republicans expected Democrats to concede rather than be blamed in the public eye for the shutdown. Neither happened.
The shutdown doesn’t prevent Congress from being in session, and since the shutdown began the Senate has been working: The Senate passed a bipartisan full-year defense spending bill, passed bills to end Trump tariffs and reverse Biden-era regulations, confirmed a handful of Trump nominations for federal judges, agency leaders, and military positions, and voted several times on (failed) proposals to end the shutdown. And Senate leaders from both parties have been negotiating an end to the shutdown.
The House of Representatives, on the other hand, has had the lights off. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent House Republicans home a week before the shutdown began until Democrats accede to the Republican proposal. Rather than actually being in recess, every few days a token representative gavels the chamber in and then a few minutes later gavels it out as if there is nothing to do. Most representatives are not in D.C., nor holding town halls in their districts, or apparently doing any work at all.
With the chamber technically in session, the Constitution would like a word: Johnson has refused to seat a representative elected in September. It’s unprecedented, and it’s to avoid a vote on an issue that would embarrass the President: Seating Rep.-elect Grijalva could trigger a vote on releasing DOJ’s Epstein files. (This is the second time the Speaker has kept the House out of session to avoid the Epstein issue.)
We’re here because of the filibuster rule in the Senate.
The Senate’s 3/5ths threshold to end debate is why 52 Republicans now need 8 Democrats in the Senate, or 60 senators, to advance legislation to end the shutdown. Republicans are down one vote of their own because Sen. Rand Paul has been voting against the Republican plan for its increase of the deficit. (Numerically, President Trump could align with Democrats and 13 Republicans instead, which is actually how government shutdowns were avoided in his first term, or legislators could come together without Trump, but none of that is likely.)
In March, Trump did find 10 Democrats to join Republicans to pass a continuing resolution (CR). But funding levels have dramatically changed since that last CR: Republicans used special rules that give a simple-majority vote for their signature bills earlier this year: The One Big Beautiful Bill which made most of the changes to federal spending mentioned above and the bill that defunded foreign aid (USAID) and public broadcasting (CPB) followed special simple-majority procedures. With a simple majority, they could pass those bills without Democratic support. Those rules don’t apply to the shutdown.
Or they could change the filibuster rule. Trump has told Republicans to do so, just as he did in 2017 to confirm his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. So far, Senate Republicans have not taken that route this time. Changing the filibuster would open the door to more extreme legislation not only now but also if Democrats take back the Senate.
Republicans have indicated they might use those simple-majority rules again next year to undo whatever deal is reached to end the shutdown (similar to how those rules were used to undo the CR that Trump himself signed into law a few months prior). That gives Democrats little incentive to negotiate and is why they want a guarantee that Republicans will stick with the deal for the whole fiscal year.
Soon House Republicans are going to reach the end of their bluff because no proposal is on the table for funding beyond November 21. They will have to come back to the Capitol to vote on a proposal for what’s next, which might be extending the stalemate, offering a concession to win Democrats’ votes, or the Democrats folding. And it looks like we may be repeating this all over again in Februrary rather than having funding for the whole fiscal year.
For now though, we’re where we’ve been since October 1: Democrats demanding a revised continuing resolution that extends health care subsidies and House Republicans refusing to entertain any negotiation until after Democrats approve the continuing resolution as it is.
(Two more thoughts: Half of the federal budget isn’t on a yearly cycle and so is mostly unaffected, like social security and Medicaid. Federal workers are supposed to get back-pay per a bill President Trump signed into law after the last shutdown, but Trump has floated the idea of ignoring that law. You might think furloughed workers don’t deserve to be paid, but they aren’t permitted to get another job while still a federal employee.)