As someone who actually worked for the Federal government when it shutdown in the past, people are exaggerating the implications for narrative purposes. This happens semi-routinely, there is a boring reality that goes along with it.
The people worst off are Federal contractors. They are effectively unemployed during these periods. Many actual employees, like me in previous shutdowns, are essentially on irregular paid time off. In theory it is unpaid, but it is always retroactively paid in practice and everyone knows this. People that are “critical” kind of get a raw deal because they still have to work while people deemed less essential don’t have to work.
It is unfortunate that it happens but I wouldn’t get overly caught up in the theater of it all.
> This happens semi-routinely, there is a boring reality that goes along with it. [...] retroactively paid in practice
An important difference is that in the past employees were furloughed... but yesterday Republicans threatened they would permanently fire employees instead [0][1] and I'm not sure how it'll shake out.
Their hostage-taking threat falls flat though: They already have have a solid track record of capricious and/or illegal firings [3][4] since the election. There's no reason to expect appeasement would make them stop what they still want to do anyway.
>As someone who actually worked for the Federal government when it shutdown in the past, people are exaggerating the implications for narrative purposes. This happens semi-routinely, there is a boring reality that goes along with it.
You seem to have normalised Government shutdowns in a way to cope with it.
But this is not normal, this does not happen in a normal government process.
I found out yesterday that it is now the law that federal employees are guaranteed back pay after a shutdown, thanks to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 passed after the 2019 shutdown.
Except for people who are on welfare programs. They also dont get their payouts. Sure they WILL get it all back. But just because people will get to eat next month doesnt mean not eating this month isnt a problem.
Some federal contractor companies have a plan but not all do. They may allow workers leave without pay, forced them to take vacation/PTO, or critical workers are forced to come in and do 3 jobs at once but be paid while their friends/coworkers are not getting a paycheck.
“The people worst off are Federal contractors. They are effectively unemployed during these periods.”
I do not know if they are worst off as hopefully they have some emergency savings, credit card, or 401k loan they can take out.
I think it's a bit worse this time since we have an unbridled President, that the SCOTUS has made King-adjacent, who wants to permanently fire a lot of the furloughed employees out of vengeance and with no clear logic other than he's angry. So this time it's not quite as matter-of-fact.
It's not unprecedented, but I think calling it "regular" is also downplaying the issue here. We've been roughly on a schedule of once per 5 years or so.
I think it is highly irregular given this presidency. Reagan shut down 3 times to weaken various unions and facilities, really wielding it as a bargaining chip. Clinton shut down twice as a president with a congress that didn't align with him
Trump has now shut down the government 5 times, and the truly odd thing is how 4 times he had congress on his side. This isn't really something to just shake off.
(and for completeness. Carter had the first shutdown ever and Obama shut down once as well).
Historically, congress always passed a one-time bill to retroactively pay the federal employees after each shutdown.
Because it turns out not paying your workers is extremely unpopular, especially if you want to retain them as workers in the future. Most people (federal workers included) are living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't financially weather a furlough - they still need to pay rent. The federal government would quickly find itself unable to attract employees given how often shutdowns occur.
> The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has added a message to the top of its website blaming the looming government shutdown on the "radical left".
That’s rich coming from a department that has intentionally withheld money from our most vulnerable people this year.
Combined with the mass e-mails Trump appointees sent out within different departments, these are crimes under the Hatch Act, since they are using government resources for nakedly partisan purposes.
In various other countries, if you can't pass a budget, your governance is in question to the point that you face a new election. i.e., it is on you to negotiate more flexibly to avoid this.
How many of said countries require more than a simple majority to pass a budget though? To my knowledge the US is quite the exception in that it requires a _special_ majority for such things.
A simple majority could be challenging if the government is formed via coalition, but if you have any examples where 1) a single party formed government and 2) a simple majority was the only requirement to pass a budget and 3) a budget failed to pass… then enlighten me by all means!
However, while you're absolutely right about the optics, that's fundamentally not how the US government operates.
We are not a parliamentary system, and elections happen on a fixed schedule. Unless Congresspeople die or resign, this is the Congress we are stuck with until the midterm elections late next year.
The democrats held the majority for a few months over 12 years ago. And that resulted in the biggest Healthcare policy in history.
Republicans have held thr majority for 3 years of trumps 5 so far. What does he have to show for it? I'm genuinely asking: what benefit has he provided to the people wit that unilateral power?
This is the least productive Congressional session in history. It's a tiny majority. Also, the pretend Christian head of the House refuses to swear in Adelita Grijalva who was duly elected. The modern House has very little real power compared to the Senate.
Yes and Republicans deliberately didn't show up. If people watched CSPAN instead of getting their news from social media, it would be obvious to everyone who is responsible.
Doesn't even matter if it's 60 because the GOP has 3 members voting against. Meaning they couldn't even get 51 if they used budget reconciliation. BTW the reason they can't use budget reconciliation is because of a hole they dug themselves in.
If my mother or other older people i know who need Medicare, medicaid, ssn, snap lose it or see huge increases while taxes are reduced for the top 5% while trump enriches himself while congress remains paid and insured ... I'm gonna have to start getting involved in someway ... these (my mother and friends) people are not lazy assholes.
If my ssn is screwed with which I've paid into for decades ... because of interest on debt and other basic financial mismagement ... there's gonna be push back.
The overreach of the right is building cases for nyc next lefty mayor (likely) and Sanders, aoc, Robert reichs of the world btw ... too far left can have its own other problems. We don't need that either.
We are in serious need of competence and getting the basics done right for the right reasons.
While i could go on at length about trump's own rank stupidity we all must see the root cause is an instiutionally corrupt and incompetent congress. That power vacuum is filled by trump now.. but it's congress that bears the ultimate responsibility. Democrats are not criminally so flagrant or culpable but democrat policy and no street smarts didn't help. They are a very weak compeitor.
Blatantly wrong, since a focus of theirs is extending the current ACA funding from the previous budget which the current proposed budget doesn't have. Do you repeat the talking points sincerely without understanding them, or disingenuously with an understanding of why they're false?
I mean, do you understand how many pages and details there are in a federal budget, do you think it's plausible that an incoming administration wouldn't make hundreds of changes from the budget of an administration of the opposite party? That's a plausible scenario?
Joe Biden didn't cut Healthcare spending. Do you even know why this CR is failing? Did you already forget the highly contentious megabill passed that no Democrat agreed with? They barely eeked out a majority, now when they need 20 more to agree to "continue" that it doesn't work out. Surprise.
The Republicans only require 50 votes to get rid of the 60 vote rule. They can do it any time they want, but then the jig would be up, and they wouldn't be able to blame Democrats any more.
They think it's better for them politically to keep blaming the Democrats than to take responsibility for their own choices. I really can't blame them, they have made some pretty bad choices recently.
Back in normal times, the Democrats and Republicans would have been able to negotiate something, because everybody assumed the president would obey whatever budget they passed. But now even if they negotiate something, the president just cuts whatever he doesn't like, and the Republicans in Congress won't hold him to account.
"There isn't any substantive reason why there ought to be a government shutdown. This is something that has been done routinely, as I said, 13 different times when the Democrats had the majority. But we are not going to be held hostage for over $1 trillion in new spending on a continuing resolution," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said ahead of the vote.
Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. They didn't bother to show up to avert the shutdown. The House convened for 2 minutes and refused to allow any discussion yesterday.
If you have to use the "this hasn't happened since X" formulation for dramatic effect, at least do it when the time scale is actually impressive. Last time it happened was 7 years ago? That's not even 2 presidencies
Readit News
The people worst off are Federal contractors. They are effectively unemployed during these periods. Many actual employees, like me in previous shutdowns, are essentially on irregular paid time off. In theory it is unpaid, but it is always retroactively paid in practice and everyone knows this. People that are “critical” kind of get a raw deal because they still have to work while people deemed less essential don’t have to work.
It is unfortunate that it happens but I wouldn’t get overly caught up in the theater of it all.
An important difference is that in the past employees were furloughed... but yesterday Republicans threatened they would permanently fire employees instead [0][1] and I'm not sure how it'll shake out.
Their hostage-taking threat falls flat though: They already have have a solid track record of capricious and/or illegal firings [3][4] since the election. There's no reason to expect appeasement would make them stop what they still want to do anyway.
_____________
[0] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administr...
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/unions-file-suit-t...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/nx-s1-5544317/federal-probati...
[3] https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
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You seem to have normalised Government shutdowns in a way to cope with it.
But this is not normal, this does not happen in a normal government process.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/24
Then again, a lot has changed over that... ~6.5 years.
[0] https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/201928
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“The people worst off are Federal contractors. They are effectively unemployed during these periods.”
I do not know if they are worst off as hopefully they have some emergency savings, credit card, or 401k loan they can take out.
Last 4 shutdowns: 21, 16, 2, and 34 days.
I think it is highly irregular given this presidency. Reagan shut down 3 times to weaken various unions and facilities, really wielding it as a bargaining chip. Clinton shut down twice as a president with a congress that didn't align with him
Trump has now shut down the government 5 times, and the truly odd thing is how 4 times he had congress on his side. This isn't really something to just shake off.
(and for completeness. Carter had the first shutdown ever and Obama shut down once as well).
Why only in theory? Why does it get paid back in practice?
Because it turns out not paying your workers is extremely unpopular, especially if you want to retain them as workers in the future. Most people (federal workers included) are living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't financially weather a furlough - they still need to pay rent. The federal government would quickly find itself unable to attract employees given how often shutdowns occur.
After 2019, congress passed a law that guaranteed back-pay for future shutdowns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Employee_Fair_Treat...
It’s all fine to posture, but politicians hate long term consequences when they can use other people’s money to avoid them.
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That’s rich coming from a department that has intentionally withheld money from our most vulnerable people this year.
If anyone in the DOJ cared to enforce it.
Can't generate money, only lose it then refuse to allocate what we have left.
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https://www.whitehouse.gov/
I fear this may longer than I originally suspected.
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https://i.imgur.com/3SNa03R.png
Not to mention, the graphic is extraordinarily ugly.
There's a big black bar across the top of the homepage, with a message that changes depending on the time, ex:
Clicking the link opens another page that claims:> Democrats Have Shut Down the Government
> Americans Don’t Agree with Democrats’ Actions
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Republicans hold the majority... hello?
A simple majority could be challenging if the government is formed via coalition, but if you have any examples where 1) a single party formed government and 2) a simple majority was the only requirement to pass a budget and 3) a budget failed to pass… then enlighten me by all means!
We are not a parliamentary system, and elections happen on a fixed schedule. Unless Congresspeople die or resign, this is the Congress we are stuck with until the midterm elections late next year.
- US Conservative Majority who makes policy ...
When Republicans hold the majority Democrats can't do anything because Republicans don't let them.
The Affordable Care Act came out of one of the only recent years they had the House, Senate, and White House.
Republicans have held thr majority for 3 years of trumps 5 so far. What does he have to show for it? I'm genuinely asking: what benefit has he provided to the people wit that unilateral power?
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Denocrats are voting against continuing the current budget that they passed while Joe Biden was president.
If my ssn is screwed with which I've paid into for decades ... because of interest on debt and other basic financial mismagement ... there's gonna be push back.
The overreach of the right is building cases for nyc next lefty mayor (likely) and Sanders, aoc, Robert reichs of the world btw ... too far left can have its own other problems. We don't need that either.
We are in serious need of competence and getting the basics done right for the right reasons.
While i could go on at length about trump's own rank stupidity we all must see the root cause is an instiutionally corrupt and incompetent congress. That power vacuum is filled by trump now.. but it's congress that bears the ultimate responsibility. Democrats are not criminally so flagrant or culpable but democrat policy and no street smarts didn't help. They are a very weak compeitor.
I mean, do you understand how many pages and details there are in a federal budget, do you think it's plausible that an incoming administration wouldn't make hundreds of changes from the budget of an administration of the opposite party? That's a plausible scenario?
This budget has veered sharply away from Biden's budget.
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The house has a majority; republicans control that.
The senate requires 60 votes in order to control which the republicans dont have. So the democrats absolutely can and have shutdown the government.
They think it's better for them politically to keep blaming the Democrats than to take responsibility for their own choices. I really can't blame them, they have made some pretty bad choices recently.
Back in normal times, the Democrats and Republicans would have been able to negotiate something, because everybody assumed the president would obey whatever budget they passed. But now even if they negotiate something, the president just cuts whatever he doesn't like, and the Republicans in Congress won't hold him to account.
https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/longest-government-shu...
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