Federal workers missed paychecks for over 60 days. Congress missed none.
TSA officers screened 3 million passengers a day this spring. They did it without paychecks. Some sold plasma to pay their bills. Others slept in their cars. Some just quit. Sixty days into the longest partial shutdown in American history, Congress returned from its two-week recess and still has not fixed it.
The Senate did try – passing a funding bill by unanimous consent before recess even began. The House went home anyway. Congress eventually returned, and DHS is now recalling furloughed workers on redirected funds that have no congressional appropriation behind them. The executive branch is essentially running a federal agency on financial improvisation because the legislative branch will not do its job. If that does not alarm you, it should.
This is not a partisan problem. A November NBC News poll found that 52% of voters blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the 2025 shutdown, while 42% blamed congressional Democrats – the highest share of Democratic blame in NBC polling in over 30 years. Both sides have blocked proposals. Both sides have pointed fingers. Both sides have taken a recess while government employees were working without pay. This is a modern Congress problem, and the pattern predates any single party or president.
To understand why it keeps happening, consider how rare it once was. Between 1995 and 2013, the government did not shut down once. An 18-year stretch of Congress doing the bare minimum. Then came the 16-day shutdown in 2013, the 35-day shutdown in 2018 to 2019, the 43-day shutdown in the fall of 2025, and now this. Each one was treated as an extraordinary crisis. Each one became a template for the next. What was once a last resort is now a governing strategy, and a remarkably consequence-free one at that.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the 2018 to 2019 shutdown shaved 11 billion dollars off the GDP, 3 billion of which was never recovered. The 2013 shutdown cost taxpayers an estimated $2.5 billion dollars in pay for work that never got done. Shutdowns do not save money – they burn it. The bill lands on everyone except the people who caused it: Congress.
Hellbound and Down 