Will The Government Shut Down This Week?

What you need to know.

Programming note: I’ll be going live on Substack today at 2 p.m. ET with

Rachel Janfaza

— an expert reporter on youth politics — to talk about how Gen Z is responding to the first few months of the Trump administration. You can tune in by downloading the Substack app; if you accept notifications, it will notify you when we go live.

Now, onto the news:

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The world’s most powerful government once again finds itself on the verge of a shutdown this week, with federal funding set to expire at the end of the day Friday.

Of course, the typical process for dealing with government funding is for lawmakers to pass 12 individual appropriations bills covering various spending categories (“National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs,” “Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies,” and so on), or at least to pass them in one fell swoop in what’s known as an “omnibus” package.

Theoretically, that’s all supposed to happen before a new fiscal year begins on October 1, but since the modern budget process was set up in the 1970s, Congress has only approved every appropriations bill by the deadline four times: in 1977, 1989, 1995, and 1997. In every other year, lawmakers have had to pass at least one “continuing resolution” (or CR) temporarily extending funding levels for at least some agencies from the last fiscal year into the new one.

By last October, the beginning of Fiscal Year 2025, the Republican-controlled House had passed five appropriations bills along party lines. The Senate (then controlled by Democrats) had taken up none of them. When the deadline arrived, the two chambers approved a bipartisan CR that lasted through December, then (one day before it was set to expire) another that lasts through this Friday. (If you recall, that December-passed CR currently in effect was House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Plan C, after Elon Musk killed Plan A and conservatives killed Plan B.)

In the meantime, the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have been trying in fits and starts to broker a bipartisan appropriations deal, repeatedly announcing that they’re “very close” to an agreement, despite all appearances to the contrary.

Both sides have sought to blame the other for the breakdown in the talks: Democrats said in late February that Republicans were “walking away” from the negotiations; the GOP’s top appropriator responded in early March by saying, “My chair hasn’t moved—I remain at the negotiating table.”

One of the key sticking points has been the Democratic push to include provisions in the appropriations package underscoring that the executive branch has to adhere to congressionally approved funding levels, amid the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally cut government spending. They haven’t made any headway trying to persuade the Republican-led Congress to rein in a Republican president.

“They want to limit, tie the hands of the president on what he is able to do with the expenditures in the executive branch,” Speaker Johnson (R-LA) told NBC News in February. “That’s never been done before. That’s a nonstarter for us, and the Democrats know that.”

With an overall spending deal elusive, lawmakers will have to pass another CR by the end of Friday to avoid a shutdown.

House Republicans released their proposed CR on Saturday and plan to hold a vote on it Tuesday. You might think that the measure would only be a single page: in theory, all it has to do is scrub the “March 14” deadline from the December CR and replace it with a new date.

Instead, the legislation — which you can read here — goes on for 99 pages. That’s because the bill isn’t quite a “clean” CR, in which funding levels are merely carried over from last fiscal year, unchanged.

The Republican-authored CR would mostly maintain Fiscal Year 2024’s $1.7 trillion federal budget, but it does make a few changes. Defense spending would be increased by about $6 billion, including to pay for a service member pay raise. Non-defense spending would be decreased by $13 billion, largely by cutting off funding to projects secured by lawmakers for their districts. (These funds, known as “earmarks,” were originally appropriated for the 2024 fiscal year, but were extended in both of the previous 2025 fiscal year CRs.)

The measure also includes a $485 million funding boost for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and about $500 million in new funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which provides nutrition assistance for low-income mothers and their children. As the Washington Post notes, it would cut the budget for Washington, D.C. by about $1 billion by moving the capital city back to its Fiscal Year 2024 budget. (Congress gets final say over D.C.’s budget, but the last two CRs allowed the city to move onto the Fiscal Year 2025 budget passed by the D.C. Council even as federal agencies were stuck in 2024.)

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), bristling at the non-defense spending cuts, is urging his members to vote against the CR on Tuesday, which means Speaker Johnson will have a narrow margin for error. With the House split 218-214, Johnson can only afford one GOP defection if all Democrats show up and vote “no.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the libertarian-minded fiscal hawk, has already signaled plans to be that one defection. “Unless I get a lobotomy Monday that causes me to forget what I’ve witnessed the past 12 years, I’ll be a NO on the CR this week,” he wrote on X last night. (Rumor has it that Johnson is researching the offerings at nearby psych hospitals.)

President Trump has endorsed the CR (“We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right,” he wrote), which will likely be enough for many other conservatives who are usually loath to accept stopgap funding bills. But if any more Republicans drop off, it will require Johnson to pick up at least some Democratic votes, which he could receive, as some Democrats in vulnerable districts are hesitant to block government funding.

Then, assuming the CR manages to pass the House, we’ll move over to the Senate. The measure will be subject to the 60-vote filibuster, which means here Democratic votes will definitely be needed to pass the CR — at least seven of them in the 53-47 chamber, but likely eight, since Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is a presumptive “no.”

This will be a key decision point for a party that has been scrounging for a message since Trump’s election, often to the dissatisfaction of its base.

Several Democratic senators have suggested the party should refuse to accept the Republican-drafted CR, using the opportunity to take a stand against Trump and Elon Musk. But that would be a risky play politically: House Republicans are considering leaving town early this week if the CR passes their chamber, which would leave Senate Democrats no choice other than to approve the CR or force a shutdown. Polling from past shutdowns show that the party that blocks a funding bill — which, in this case, would be the Democrats — is generally the one that shoulders blame for the ensuing shutdown, which voters almost always disapprove of.

In a shutdown, thousands of government workers are sent home, winding down any operations that aren’t deemed essential. With Democrats blaming Trump and Musk for freezing government operations and sparking chaos across Washington, Republicans would like nothing more than to be able to lay a shutdown — which would cause both — at Democrats’ feet.

Swing-state Democratic senators — the likeliest bloc to provide the eight needed votes for the CR — so far appear split on what to do. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said on “Meet the Press” this weekend that she plans to “withhold” her vote until a bill includes “assurances” that the Trump administration will spend funds the way Congress intends.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has signaled plans to support the bill. “Never, never, never vote for a shutdown—ever,” he wrote last week.

Many in Washington believe, in the end, a CR will pass and that this whole thing can be treated like a sideshow. Here’s how Politico’s Playbook newsletter, the daily Bible for Beltway insiders, put it this morning:

The expectation in D.C. is that a short-term funding bill will ultimately be passed, although no one knows for sure until the deal is done. In the meantime, we all get to obsess over this holdout Republican congressman and that wavering Democratic senator, and ignore the zillions of other important stories raging around the world. Good times.

But that misses the reason why this is an important story, too.

You see, I said before that this CR — like any CR — will include a new deadline that government funding will be extended to, but I didn’t say when that deadline will be. The answer? October 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year.

That means, if this CR passes, lawmakers will have gone the entire 2025 fiscal year without ever passing a single permanent funding bill.

There are three other times this century — 2007, 2011, and 2013 — that at least some parts of the government were funded by CRs for a whole year, but in none of them were the entire government funded by CR for an entire fiscal year. At the very least, in each of those years, the Defense Department received an updated funding measure.

“Never in recent history has Washington forced the U.S. military to spend a full year applying yesterday’s budget to tomorrow’s challenges,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, noting that CRs keep funding levels stable from year to year even as inflation raises prices, guaranteeing that the Pentagon’s buying power will diminish.

McConnell added: “Forcing the U.S. military to equip itself for next year’s threats at this year’s prices with last year’s dollars is a recipe for disaster.”

As McConnell noted, that means that while China is racing to modernize its military, the Defense Department will be denied new funding to pursue similar projects. The same is true across the government, where CRs — especially one for a whole fiscal year — hamper government operations and make it harder for agencies to plan for the future. This is one way political polarization makes our government work demonstrably worse and makes our country less prepared to combat urgent threats.

Three quick nerd notes before I sign off for the day:

1. You may recall that in 2023, lawmakers passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a bipartisan funding deal that included a provision aimed at encouraging lawmakers not to keep governing by CR. Under the FRA, if all 12 appropriations bills haven’t been approved by April 30 in each fiscal year, automatic spending cuts are supposed to set in immediately. Defense and non-defense programs would be cut in equal measure, which was theoretically supposed to induce Republicans and Democrats alike to come to a deal.

But members of Congress — like 535 Harry Houidinis — are known for placing handcuffs on themselves and then figuring out a way to wriggle out of them. The Trump administration has certified that approving a full-year CR would count as full appropriations measures having passed, rather than as the stopgap measure it is, meaning the automatic cuts would not go into effect.

2. Don’t forget: a government funding bill (which sets the amount of money each agency can spend) ≠ a debt ceiling bill (which sets the amount of debt the government can take out to pay for that spending). This CR does not impact the debt ceiling in any way, although — separately — the ceiling could be breached as soon as May. When government funding expires, the government shuts down, furloughing non-essential workers. When the debt ceiling is reached, the government defaults, lacking enough money to pay all its creditors or fund all existing programs.

Shutdowns have happened many times. The U.S. has never defaulted.

3. It’s also important to remember that when we talk about government funding, we’re talking about discretionary government funding, which makes up only a fraction of how much money the government spends. That’s because some of the most expensive government programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — are funded as mandatory spending, which means they roll over from year to year without Congress having to re-up them. (That also means they are not impacted if Congress fails to extend discretionary funding.)

Here’s a graphic from a few years back to give you an idea of how much spending is at stake in the current funding fight (the dark blue) and how much isn’t (all the rest):

Annual spending on the aforementioned mandatory programs comes out to almost $4 trillion; discretionary spending, encompassing everything else (including all the defense and non-defense programs that lawmakers fight over every year) currently costs around $1.7 trillion.