Shutdown Hits Record With No End in Sight

Wendy Schiller, Professor of Political Science at Brown University, discusses the latest in the ongoing US government shutdown.

Congress just beat a record, but it’s not one to celebrate.

As of today, funding for every government agency has lapsed for 17 days and counting — marking the longest full government-wide shutdown in US history. And lawmakers are bracing for the long haul.

The country is “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history, unless Democrats drop their demands,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) warned this week. Democrats have moved no closer to folding, though, and are refusing to advance a clean spending stopgap without health-care assurances.

While longer shutdowns took place in fiscal 1996 and 2019, those were partial, meaning some federal agencies were funded. Shutdowns had little impact before a 1980 legal opinion. The longest full government-wide shutdown, meaning no spending bills were signed into law before a deadline, lasted 16 days in fiscal 2014.

This shutdown is on track to last at least 20 days now that senators have left for the weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers — including congressional staffers — have been furloughed or working without pay for more than two weeks. As congressional Democrats and Republicans dig in, it’s increasingly unclear when and how this could end.

House GOP leaders have begun to raise concerns about shutdown-related travel complications for Thanksgiving, which is more than a month away.

“Airports will be flooded with flight cancellations and delays amid the busiest time to travel all year” if the shutdown continues, House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) said this week, blaming Democrats.

“If there is travel disruption at Thanksgiving, which I pray that we’re not still here, it’s going to be Republican disruption,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said of Emmer’s comments, highlighting the distance between each party’s position.

Nobody wants the shutdown to last another six weeks until Thanksgiving, least of all the federal workers who won’t get paid until it’s over. But “there’s a strong possibility that it could go that long,” said House GOP Chairwoman Lisa McClain (Mich.).

On the Senate side, lawmakers are becoming weary and pessimistic after taking 10 failed votes on the House-passed continuing resolution, with more to come next week.

“This shutdown is going to last a while,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.

News From the Hill

Full-Year Bill Falters: Democrats blocked a procedural vote on a Defense appropriations bill yesterday, saying they want firmer agreements on which spending measures will be packaged together and other assurances on negotiations, Jack Fitzpatrick, Roxana Tiron, and Lillianna Byington report.

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) joined Republicans to support advancing the House-passed bill (H.R. 4016; BGOV Bill Analysis), to which the Senate version (S. 2572; BGOV Bill Analysis) could have been offered along with other spending measures.

Democrats want a plan to negotiate a bicameral funding package that matches the Senate’s preferred funding level, rather than the House’s lower level, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said. She also said they want assurances that the White House won’t retroactively rescind some of the funding included in the bill.

Sanctions Vote Coming: Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is readying a vote on legislation imposing sanctions on countries that trade with Russia, a move to put economic pressure on Vladimir Putin even after President Donald Trump announced plans to soon meet the Russian leader, Erik Wasson, Jamie Tarabay, and Alberto Nardelli report. “I don’t want to commit to a hard deadline, but it will be soon,” Thune said yesterday, adding that he would schedule a vote in the “next 30 days.”

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