The U.S. federal government partially shut down early Saturday, again illustrating how procedural delays and partisan politics can trump even wide bipartisan support. The shutdown came despite the Senate’s passage of a spending bill just hours earlier by a lopsided 71-29 margin.
The legislation combined five spending bills with a two-week continuing resolution to provide more time for an agreement on how to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). However, since the House of Representatives is not scheduled to meet until Monday, the bill could not be completed on time, resulting in a government shutdown.
This is yet another example of a problem in Washington: Congress’s failure to coordinate its activities even when there is bipartisan support.
A “Short” Shutdown — With Real Consequences
However, lawmakers and administration officials have tried to play down the shutdown as likely being of a short duration, especially in comparison to last year’s record-breaking 43-day shutdown. But history shows that even a short shutdown can have real-world costs.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the 2018-2019 shutdown cost the U.S. GDP an estimated $11 billion, with $3 billion of that amount lost forever. Government workers missed paychecks, contractors were not paid, and critical services came to a halt or slowed. Even a short shutdown can cause problems with airport security, federal grants, housing assistance programs, and regulatory oversight.
This time around, appropriations lapsed for agencies responsible for national security, healthcare, transportation, education, housing, labor standards, and foreign diplomacy—essentially the core of the federal government.
House Delay and Presidential Deference
House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he would be in favor of the Senate-approved deal, thanks to the support of President Donald Trump for the package. This move by Johnson, as reported during a House GOP conference call, shows how the legislative leadership is still dependent on the approval of the president rather than the need for action.
Johnson hopes that the House will pass the bill on Monday, and then it will go to Trump for signing. Until then, the agencies are in a shutdown situation, even though the lawmakers have already reached an agreement on the funding in principle.
Homeland Security at the Center of the Standoff
The most disputed part of the funding package is related to the Department of Homeland Security. The Senate deal removed DHS from the broader appropriations bill and instead put it in a temporary stopgap spending bill, effectively kicking funding decisions down the road.
DHS has been a source of tension for Democrats, particularly with regards to aggressive immigration enforcement actions, including recent raids in Minnesota that have sparked criticism from civil liberties organizations and local leaders. Meanwhile, Republicans have used DHS spending as a bargaining chip to push through hard-line immigration policies.
This dual-track approach to funding one of the government’s largest and most complex agencies is a symptom of Congress’s inability to square immigration enforcement with other governance priorities.
Individual Holds, National Impact
The shutdown was further complicated by holds in the Senate, particularly from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Graham insisted that his hold on the package could not be lifted unless there was a guaranteed vote on his bill to criminalize so-called “sanctuary city” policies.
His bill would make it a crime to prosecute state and local officials accused of undermining federal immigration enforcement efforts—a move widely panned by legal analysts as unconstitutional and likely to spark years of litigation.
Graham also insisted that his hold be lifted in connection with the “Arctic Frost” investigation led by former special counsel Jack Smith, in which he sought new notification procedures if members of Congress are notified that their phone records have been seized in a criminal investigation.
Agencies Ordered to Wind Down
In a memo sent Friday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought instructed federal agencies to begin “orderly shutdown activities,” telling employees to report to work only to prepare for closures.
While the administration expressed hope the lapse would be brief, such instructions carry immediate effects: furlough notices, suspended services, and uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors.
Roughly 800,000 federal employees were furloughed or worked without pay during the last prolonged shutdown—a precedent that continues to loom over each funding lapse.
A Structural Problem, Not an Isolated Incident
Trump urged lawmakers on Thursday to support the deal, backing funding for most of the government through the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Yet his intervention did little to prevent another shutdown, reinforcing the reality that presidential support alone cannot overcome congressional dysfunction.
This shutdown is not an anomaly but part of a broader pattern. Since 1980, the U.S. government has shut down more than 20 times, with the frequency increasing sharply over the past decade as budget negotiations have become vehicles for ideological battles rather than routine governance.
Governance by Crisis
The latest shutdown exposes a system increasingly reliant on brinkmanship, short-term fixes, and political hostage-taking. While lawmakers frame the lapse as temporary, the cumulative effect of repeated shutdowns is corrosive: weakened public trust, economic inefficiency, and an erosion of the federal government’s ability to function predictably.
As Congress once again scrambles to reopen the government, the larger question remains unanswered: how long can a global superpower afford to govern itself through manufactured crises rather than stable, timely decision-making?
