To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website. Today, Congress approved extending funding for the federal government through Dec. The extension comes just hours before current funding was set to run out. That means the federal government, and nonessential services, can stay open. Millions of federal workers will continue to be able to show up for their jobs and receive paychecks.
But how lawmakers will handle government funding at the end of the year remains unknown. When a government shutdown occurs, nonessential federal services stop until new funding legislation is passed and signed into law. Each federal agency has its own shutdown plan, which indicates if its activities can continue during the shutdown—and if it has to furlough its employees.
However, many services would suffer negative consequences that would be passed on to ordinary Americans. Here are four of the biggest. It would also have difficulty answering taxpayer questions and resolving compliance issues quickly. During a press conference on Wednesday, however, Press Secretary Jen Psaki made a point to tell reporters that the IRS would be expected to continuing processing tax refunds and child tax credits, should a shutdown occur and IRS employees became furloughed.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP , commonly referred to as food stamps, has been a critical lifeline for families struggling with the economic consequences of the pandemic.
According to the CRFB, past continuing resolutions have only authorized the benefits to be sent out for 30 days after a shutdown begins.
Should a shutdown go on longer than that, families that already have limited means could be forced to slash their grocery budgets. But new applications or claims for federal benefits, such as Social Security or Veterans Affairs payments, would not be processed during a government shutdown, potentially leading to a delay in receiving first payments.
The White House budget office said on Thursday agencies were drawing up plans, which in the past have included suspending processing of applications for firearms and passports. Much of government would continue on autopilot, including mailing Social Security pension checks and paying hospital bills for the elderly. Soldiers can still fight wars, but many civilians in the Department of Defense will be furloughed. Eventually, essential services would suffer.
Congress must pass a spending bill to keep the government from shutting down or to reopen it. Democrats in the House of Representatives last week passed a bill that would renew government funding, but it included raising the cap on federal borrowing. Republicans object to increasing the debt limit, and they are expected to block the bill in the Senate as soon as Monday. The most recent one, which started on Dec. During that period, The Conversation ran a series of articles that helped explain what was at stake, who suffers and why.
Below are some insights gleaned by experts from previous government shutdowns that may give a clue as to what the U. The federal workforce currently comprises around 2. In the shutdown of , some , workers were affected by the government shutdown.
Of those, around , were furloughed, meaning they could not work or get paid, while the rest worked without pay for the duration of the shutdown.
She explained that the vast majority of federal employees work and live outside of Washington, D. The work they perform ranges from protecting waterways and ensuring food safety to investigating crime. Read more: Who are the federal workers affected by the shutdown? During the shutdown, the Department of Agriculture had to rely on a special authority included in the previous CR to allow them to continue to issue SNAP benefits.
The hours-long lapse in appropriations in February , though sometimes characterized as a shutdown, did not result in federal employee furloughs. However, before , the government did not shut down but rather continued normal operations through six funding gaps. Since , 10 funding gaps of three days or fewer have occurred, mostly over a weekend when government operations were only minimally affected.
The first two happened in the winter of when President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress were unable to agree on spending levels and the government shut down twice, for a total of 26 days.
The fourth shutdown, starting in December and continuing into January , centered on a dispute over border wall funding and was the longest-lasting shutdown at 35 days. While estimates vary widely, evidence suggests that shutdowns tend to cost, not save, money for a number of reasons. For one, putting contingency plans in place has a real cost. In addition, many user fees and other charges are not collected during a shutdown, and federal contractors sometimes include premiums in their bids to account for uncertainty in being paid.
While many federal employees are forced to be idle during a shutdown, they have historically received and are now guaranteed back pay, negating much of those potential savings. Shutdowns also carry a cost to the economy. On top of that effect, CBO notes that longer shutdowns negatively affect private-sector investment and hiring decisions as businesses cannot obtain federal permits and certifications, or access federal loans.
Theoretically, the House and Senate Appropriations committees are supposed to pass 12 different appropriations bills that are broken up by subject area and based on funding levels allocated in a budget resolution.
To avoid a shutdown, Congress would need to pass all 12 appropriations bills through both chambers and get them signed by the President before October 1. This could be done by enacting each bill individually or by packaging them together through an omnibus or minibus. On September 21, the House passed a continuing resolution that would extend current funding levels through December 3 and suspend the debt limit until near the end of Senate action is uncertain, however, due to the lack of needed Republican support for raising the debt limit under regular Senate rules as well as specific funding disagreements, including appropriations for the Iron Dome missile defense system in Israel.
For more about the status of specific appropriations bills, see Appropriations Watch: FY A continuing resolution temporarily funds the government in the absence of full appropriations bills, often by continuing funding levels from the prior year.
Traditionally, CRs have been used to give lawmakers a short period of time to complete their work on remaining appropriations bills while keeping the government open. CRs sometimes apply to only a few categories of spending, but they can also be used to fund all discretionary functions and can be used for an entire year. Even when overall funding levels have differed, lawmakers have often simply scaled up all accounts by a percent change in spending rather than making individual decisions on spending accounts.
Congress frequently passes CRs when lawmakers are unable to agree on appropriations before a deadline, and occasionally multiple CRs are necessary to fund the government for an entire fiscal year. Congress also sometimes relies on CRs during presidential transition years. In FY , for example, a series of intense congressional negotiations leading up to the election led to a series of 10 one-day CRs.
In total, Congress funded the first three months of that fiscal year with 21 continuing resolutions.
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