The Longest U.S. Government Shutdown: Causes and Consequences

By Granite State Report

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history just ended. Nearly a million federal workers went unpaid, food benefits were thrown into chaos, flights were delayed, museums and labs went dark — all because the people elected to run the government chose not to fund it. So what actually happened, and who owns the fallout?

I. Forty-Three Days That Broke a Record

On October 1, 2025, the federal government ran out of legal authority to spend money. Congress had failed to pass new funding bills for the fiscal year that began that day. At midnight, the government entered a partial shutdown — the 11th major shutdown since the modern rules around funding gaps were put in place in 1980.

This wasn’t a brief stumble. It became the longest shutdown in U.S. history, lasting 43 days until a stopgap funding package finally passed both chambers of Congress and was signed by President Donald Trump on November 12, 2025.

Roughly 900,000 federal employees were furloughed, and well over a million more worked without pay at some point during the shutdown.

Air travel was snarled as air traffic controllers and TSA workers kept the system running on IOUs. Food assistance for millions was threatened when SNAP benefits were put at risk for November. Scientific agencies like the CDC and NIH scaled back or froze research.

By the end, the shutdown was estimated to have cost the economy billions of dollars in delayed spending, lost productivity, and ripple effects in private businesses that depend on federal contracts and federal workers’ paychecks.

The immediate question people ask is simple: Why did this happen? But that splits into two harder questions:

Why did the government shut down this time?
Why do we keep designing a system where this is even possible?

And then the sharp one: Whose fault is it? We’ll get there — but to assign blame honestly, we have to reconstruct the mechanics first.

II. What Actually “Shuts Down” in a Shutdown?

A government shutdown doesn’t mean everything stops. It means Congress has not passed — and the president has not signed — appropriations bills or a temporary “continuing resolution” that allows most agencies to spend money. Under the Antideficiency Act, agencies can’t legally spend funds that haven’t been appropriated.

So agencies have to decide which activities are:

“Excepted” (or “essential”) — protecting life and property, national security, certain law-enforcement functions. Those workers stay on the job, but often without pay.
“Non-essential” — everything else that requires annual appropriations. Those workers are furloughed: they’re told not to work, and in past shutdowns have later received back pay when government reopened.

During the 2025 shutdown:

The Smithsonian museums, national parks, and many cultural institutions closed or sharply curtailed operations.
The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Education, and several other agencies furloughed 60–90% of their staff.
The Department of Agriculture announced that November SNAP benefits would not go out without court intervention, triggering lawsuits by more than two dozen states and emergency rulings to force USDA to pay.
The Federal Aviation Administration kept air traffic controllers on the job, but unpaid, while cutting schedules and warning of worsening delays and possible partial airspace closures if the shutdown continued.

USAFacts, a nonpartisan data project, noted that by early November, the shutdown had already become the longest on record and was affecting tens of millions of people who rely on programs like SNAP, WIC, and housing assistance — plus hundreds of thousands of federal workers in every state.

In other words: the shutdown wasn’t an abstract “Washington thing.” It was delayed paychecks, delayed food, delayed travel, delayed research, delayed justice — inflicted mostly on people who had exactly zero say in the political bargaining that caused it.

III. The Core Fight: Health Care Subsidies vs. “Clean” Funding

Every shutdown has a trigger. In 2013 it was the Affordable Care Act itself. In 2018–2019, it was border wall funding.

In 2025, the fight was again about health care — not whether the ACA should exist, but whether to extend enhanced subsidies on ACA marketplace plans that were originally expanded during the pandemic and extended under President Biden. Those subsidies were scheduled to expire at year’s end, with projected premium spikes averaging more than 100% for affected enrollees if Congress did nothing.

Here’s the basic standoff:

Senate Democrats demanded a funding bill that both kept the government open and extended these ACA subsidies, plus reversed certain Medicaid cuts signed earlier in Trump’s term. They framed this as protecting millions from massive premium increases and potential loss of coverage.
Republicans in the House and Senate — backed by President Trump — insisted on a “clean” short-term funding bill with no policy riders, promising a separate vote on health subsidies later. They argued Democrats were taking the government “hostage” to win leverage on a major health policy fight.

A nonpartisan fact-check summary put it bluntly: the shutdown resulted from Congress allowing a previous stopgap (the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025) to expire without new appropriations, with the immediate trigger being the stalemate over ACA subsidies and spending priorities for FY2026.

Meanwhile, polling showed that roughly three-quarters of Americans — including a majority of Republicans — supported extending the ACA tax credits, even as partisan elites dug in.

So the short version:

Democrats said: No subsidies, no funding.
Republicans said: No clean funding, no vote on subsidies.

And the government shut down while both sides tried to convince the public the other side was to blame.

IV. How the Shutdown Unfolded: A Short Timeline

March 2025:

Congress avoids a shutdown by passing the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, which funds the government through the end of the fiscal year (September 30) but leaves key questions unresolved for FY2026. Trump signs it, but Democrats warn it bakes in cuts to domestic programs and hands the White House significant power to redirect funds.

Summer 2025:

Democrats and Republicans trade shots over next year’s funding. GOP leaders signal they want further cuts to non-defense spending and limited constraints on Trump’s ability to shift money; Democrats demand protections for health care, housing, and climate programs.

Late September 2025:

With the deadline approaching, House Republicans introduce a short-term continuing resolution that maintains current spending levels but does not extend the enhanced ACA subsidies. Senate Democrats announce they will block it. Analysts across the spectrum warn a shutdown is likely.

October 1, 2025:

No deal. Funding authority expires. The government shuts down. Non-essential workers are furloughed. Essential workers stay on the job without pay.

Early–Mid October:

The impact spreads: food banks report surges in demand as unpaid workers and low-income families look for help.
The Department of Agriculture announces that no November SNAP benefits will be paid, triggering state lawsuits. Federal judges order USDA to continue payments.
Air traffic controllers, TSA staff, and other critical workers warn of mounting stress and safety risks as the shutdown drags on.

Late October:

The shutdown becomes the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the 2018–2019 record. Analysts warn the damage to the economy — and to public faith in government — may outlast the shutdown itself.

Early November:

Senate Republicans advance a compromise funding bill that keeps the government open through January 30, restores funding to key agencies, and protects SNAP and some other programs — but does not lock in an ACA subsidy extension. Eight Democrats cross the aisle to advance the measure, angering progressives.
Travel chaos intensifies: flight cancellations and delays mount as the FAA cuts schedules. A commercial pilot goes viral for telling passengers that if they’re angry, they should call their senators.

November 12–13:

The House finally passes the Senate’s funding bill in a 222–209 vote, with a handful of cross-party votes on both sides. Trump signs it, ending the shutdown — at least temporarily. The bill funds the government through January 30, restores back pay, protects SNAP through September, and adds several controversial policy riders (including, reportedly, a provision related to senators’ data and a federal THC rule). But it punts the ACA subsidy fight into December.

The shutdown ends. The underlying fight does not.

V. Who Got Hurt — and How

Shutdowns are political fights at the top that land like a hammer at the bottom.

Federal workers and contractors

Between furloughs and unpaid “excepted” work, an estimated 900,000 federal employees faced lost or delayed paychecks, with more than a million at some point working without pay.

Many live paycheck to paycheck. Food banks reported long lines of federal workers, TSA officers, and others showing up for emergency groceries. Some controllers and essential staff took second jobs to make rent while still working full time for the government — for zero current pay.

Contractors — janitors, security guards, cafeteria workers — were hit even harder. Unlike federal employees, contract workers often don’t get back pay after a shutdown ends. Some small firms that rely on federal contracts were forced to lay off staff or close.

Families relying on SNAP and other benefits

The shutdown crashed into the safety net:

USDA initially said November SNAP (food stamp) benefits would not go out because of the funding lapse, potentially affecting tens of millions of people.
States sued, and federal courts ordered USDA to pay out benefits, but the episode sowed confusion and panic among households that rely on $6 or less per person per day for food.

Food banks across the country reported surging demand both from low-income households and from unpaid federal workers.

Travelers and the aviation system

Transportation officials warned repeatedly that the shutdown was putting the aviation system under strain:

Air traffic controllers and TSA officers remained on duty but unpaid, leading to burnout, stress, and rising absenteeism.
The Department of Transportation and FAA cut flight schedules at major airports and warned that deeper cuts — up to “a trickle” of flights in some places — might be necessary if the stalemate continued.
Airlines reported thousands of cancellations and tens of thousands of delays as the shutdown stretched into November.

Passengers heard something they almost never hear: pilots explicitly urging them, over the cabin PA, to contact their members of Congress.

Science, health, and long-term damage

Shutdowns don’t just pause Twitter feeds from agencies. They disrupt:

Clinical trials and research at NIH and other science agencies
Inspections and surveillance at CDC
Environmental monitoring, grant processing, and regulatory work at EPA and other agencies

Some of that work can pick up later. But experiments ruined, data lost, and delayed decisions have permanent costs. Research nonprofits and universities warned that the 2025 shutdown was undermining U.S. scientific competitiveness and public health protection.

VI. So Who’s to Blame?

“Whose fault is it?” sounds simple. Politicians certainly acted like it was simple. Republicans blamed Democrats for tying funding to ACA subsidies. Democrats blamed Republicans and Trump for refusing to resolve subsidies before funding — and for using shutdowns as leverage in the first place.

Reality is messier. Responsibility lives at multiple levels: immediate, strategic, and structural.

1. Immediate responsibility: who pulled the trigger?

If we define “blame” as: Who allowed funding to expire on October 1 instead of passing any bill at all? then:

House Republicans passed a funding bill that kept the government open, but did not include the ACA subsidy extension.
Senate Democrats blocked that bill, insisting that the subsidies be part of any funding package.
Trump made clear he would sign a “clean” funding bill but opposed locking in the subsidies without deeper changes and cuts elsewhere.

From that narrow procedural view, both parties knowingly chose a path that led to a shutdown:

Republicans: refusing to accept a funding bill that included an ACA extension.
Democrats: refusing to accept a funding bill that didn’t.

Either side could have caved and kept the government open. Neither did.

If you want a brutally reductionist answer: the shutdown exists because enough Republicans and enough Democrats preferred a shutdown to accepting the other side’s conditions. That’s the game-theory core.

2. Strategic responsibility: who gambled with more leverage?

But the political context matters:

Republicans controlled the House and — narrowly — the Senate, plus the White House. They set the initial terms of the funding bill, knowing full well that Senate Democrats had the votes to block it.
Democrats had fresh electoral momentum and strong public polling behind the ACA subsidies. A KFF poll showed nearly three-quarters of Americans favored extending the tax credits, including a majority of Republicans.

Each side believed the other would be punished by public opinion:

Republicans argued Democrats would be blamed for “holding the government hostage over Obamacare.”
Democrats argued Republicans would be blamed for protecting cuts and allowing premiums to spike while the government was closed.

Early polling suggested more Americans blamed Republicans and Trump than Democrats — consistent with past shutdowns in which the party that appears to be demanding concessions during a funding crisis tends to take more heat.

Strategically, Republicans chose to initiate the showdown around a funding bill that excluded the subsidy extension, fully aware that Democrats would likely block it, while Democrats chose to make extension of those subsidies a red-line condition for any funding at all, fully aware that this could produce a shutdown.

If your standard is: Who introduced the must-pass bill with a known poison pill and dared the other side to swallow it? — Republicans bear more responsibility.

If your standard is: Who refused to pass any funding absent a policy win that could have been negotiated on a separate track? — Democrats bear more responsibility.

You can assign weight however you like. The honest answer is that both sets of leaders bet that the pain of a shutdown would force the other to fold. They gambled with other people’s paychecks.

3. Structural responsibility: why can this happen at all?

Now zoom out.

Shutdowns are not inevitable. They’re the product of specific rules and incentives:

The Antideficiency Act + appropriations calendar The law says: no appropriations, no spending. Congress repeatedly fails to pass the 12 regular appropriations bills on time; instead it relies on short-term measures (continuing resolutions) that create recurring cliff-edges. From 2010 to 2025, Congress failed to pass all appropriations bills by October 1 in 13 of 16 budget cycles.
Filibuster and veto points A party with a slim minority in the Senate can block a funding bill and force negotiations, even if the other party controls the House and the presidency. That’s exactly what happened here.
Hyper-polarization and safe seats Many members of Congress fear primary challengers more than general elections. That creates incentives to avoid compromise and to treat shutdowns as tests of ideological purity rather than failures of governance. Political scientists have tracked increasing ideological polarization and declining cross-party coalitions over the past several decades.
Presidential leverage Presidents of both parties have learned that shutdown brinkmanship can be used to extract policy concessions — or at least to rally their base by “standing firm.” Trump’s prior shutdown over the border wall normalized this tactic further.

If you’re looking for the deeper culprit, it’s not one party or one president. It’s a system designed with:

Too many veto points
Too few incentives to compromise
And a built-in self-destruct mechanism (the funding deadline) that turns normal disagreements into hostage situations

Congress has chosen not to defuse that mechanism.

VII. What the Final Deal Actually Did (and Didn’t) Fix

The shutdown ended when Congress passed, and Trump signed, a short-term funding bill that:

Funds most of the federal government through January 30, 2026
Restores back pay to federal workers and reverses some planned layoffs
Protects SNAP (food assistance) funding through September 30
Includes a grab-bag of policy riders, including a controversial clause allowing senators to sue if their phone records are accessed without notice, and a provision related to banning certain intoxicating hemp-derived THC products

Notice what it doesn’t do:

It does not extend the enhanced ACA marketplace subsidies that were at the center of the fight.
It does not reform the budget process to prevent future shutdowns.

Instead, the bill promises a future vote on ACA subsidies — with no guarantee it will pass — and punts broader reforms into a familiar fog of “we’ll deal with it later.”

In other words: the system just hit snooze.

VIII. How to Actually Stop This Happening Again

If Americans are tired of shutdown roulette — and polling suggests they are — then the solutions are not mysterious. Policy researchers, good-government groups, and some members of Congress from both parties have been floating reforms for years.

Here are some of the most concrete options:

1. Automatic continuing resolutions (auto-CRs)

Several bipartisan proposals would automatically continue funding at current levels if Congress misses a budget deadline. That wouldn’t solve disagreements over priorities, but it would remove the threat of a total shutdown as a bargaining chip.

Pros:

Ends shutdowns as a weapon.
Protects workers and essential services.

Cons:

Reduces pressure on Congress to do real budgeting.
Could lock in outdated funding levels for long periods.

2. No-budget, no-pay (for Congress)

Another popular idea: if Congress can’t pass appropriations on time, members don’t get paid. Versions of this have been proposed before; constitutional questions about changing congressional pay mid-term complicate implementation.

But as a signal, it’s simple: if you shut down the government, you share the pain.

3. Narrow the issues that can be tied to shutdown fights

Congress could adopt internal rules (in each chamber) discouraging or prohibiting attaching major unrelated policy changes to last-minute funding bills — especially when those policies have their own legislative tracks. That wouldn’t be legally binding, but it would set expectations and make hostage-taking more visible.

4. Fix the broader budget process

The U.S. relies on an annual appropriations cycle that almost never functions on time. Some analysts advocate:

Biennial budgets (funding for two years at a time)
Stronger penalties for missing deadlines, short of shutdowns
More realistic committee calendars

The Congressional Research Service has repeatedly documented the steady breakdown of the appropriations process and the growing reliance on emergency CRs.

None of these reforms are magic. All of them are politically hard — because shutdowns, for all the damage they cause, also give party leaders leverage.

IX. How to Understand “Blame” Without Getting Played

So, back to the question that started this: Why is the government shut down? Who’s to blame?

A fair summary looks like this:

The immediate cause of the 2025 shutdown was a funding lapse created by a standoff over ACA subsidy extensions and broader spending priorities. Republicans insisted on a funding bill without the extension; Democrats insisted on including it. Neither side backed down before the deadline.
Republican leaders, controlling both chambers and the White House, chose to initiate the funding bill that excluded the subsidies, knowing it would likely be blocked — and in doing so, used the shutdown clock as leverage to try to force Democrats to accept their terms.
Democratic leaders chose to condition any funding on an ACA extension, knowing that this meant a shutdown was the predictable result if Republicans refused. They believed the public would side with them — and polls suggest they were mostly right.
President Trump backed the Republican position, framing the shutdown as Democrats’ fault for tying funding to subsidies, while at the same time using the standoff to push cuts and policy riders aligned with his agenda. His signature ended the shutdown, but only after 43 days of damage.
Structurally, both parties have benefited at different times from a system that allows shutdown brinkmanship. Neither has meaningfully reformed that system, despite repeated crises. That long-term failure is bipartisan.

If that sounds unsatisfying, that’s because the truth is unsatisfying. There isn’t a single villain twirling a mustache. There’s a set of leaders who made hardball tactical choices inside a broken incentive structure… and millions of people who paid for it.

X. The Human Angle: Recommended Videos & Further Context

To get beyond text and into the lived reality of the shutdown, these videos are worth watching. (Each URL can be pasted directly into WordPress and will embed automatically.)

Explainer: The 2025 Shutdown in Plain English

Deep Dive: Visual breakdown of how the shutdown hit services and workers

On the ground: Air traffic controllers and flight chaos during the shutdown

Cabinet-level warning: Transportation Secretary on “mass chaos” in air travel

Policy context: Why Congress couldn’t compromise on funding and health care

These aren’t partisan campaign ads; they’re a set of vantage points on the same crisis. Watch them side by side and you get a more three-dimensional sense of how political abstractions like “appropriations” turn into three-hour delays, missed chemotherapy appointments, and food bank lines.

XI. Conclusion: A Shutdown Is a Choice

Government shutdowns aren’t hurricanes. They don’t happen to us. They are deliberate outcomes of political strategy interacting with legal machinery.

In 2025, elected officials in both parties knew precisely what would happen if they didn’t pass funding by October 1. They understood that:

Federal workers would miss paychecks.
SNAP recipients would be thrown into uncertainty.
Flights would snarl and research would stall.

They chose to run that experiment anyway — betting that the other side would break first, or that voters would pin the blame elsewhere.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: a system that allows one party to use the government’s basic functioning as a bargaining chip will be used that way. Not just by this president or these leaders, but by whoever comes next, until the underlying rules change.

So “who’s to blame?” depends on where you draw the circle:

If you draw it tight around the 2025 drama, you can argue over whether Republicans or Democrats misplayed their hand more.
If you draw it wider — around decades of polarization, neglected reforms, and a budget process that’s more ritual than reality — the blame lands squarely on Congress as an institution, and on voters who reward brinkmanship more than boring competence.

The shutdown is over. The question is whether we treat it as another round of partisan scoring… or as a warning that the machinery of American self-government needs more than another stopgap.

References

Al Jazeera. (2025, November 13). Trump signs bill ending longest US government shutdown in history.

AP News. (2025, November 12). Longest government shutdown in US history ends after 43 days as Trump signs funding bill.

Congressional Research Service. (2025). FY2025 appropriations status: In brief (R48176).

Factually. (2025, November). What caused the potential US government shutdown in November 2025?

GovFacts. (2025). Government Shutdown 2025: Why Congress can’t compromise on funding and healthcare.

HealthCare Dive. (2025, November 13). Historic government shutdown ends, leaving ACA subsidies in limbo.

Hoodline. (2025, November). Colorado’s SNAP beneficiaries to receive full November food assistance as federal government reopens.

KFF / Reuters. (2025, November 6). Most Americans back extending Obamacare tax credits amid government shutdown, KFF poll finds.

National Law Review. (2025, October). Federal government shutdown 2025: Key updates.

NPR / VPM. (2025, November 6). The federal government is still shut down. Here’s what that means across the country.

PolitiFact. (2025, October 1). Federal government shutdown 2025: Live fact-checks and updates.

Research!America. (2025). Breakdowns in the congressional appropriations process: Continuing resolutions and government shutdowns (2025 update).

Reuters. (2025, November 10). US Senate compromise sets stage to end government shutdown.

Time. (2025, November). Government shutdown ends: House sends spending bill to Trump to end record 43-day shutdown.

USAFacts. (2025, November 5). The 2025 government shutdown is the longest in US history: What to know.

Wikipedia. (2025). Government shutdowns in the United States.

Wikipedia. (2025). 2025 United States federal government shutdown.

WRAL. (2025, November 11). Government shutdown: Will Congress extend ACA subsidies before millions face higher premiums?

The Washington Post. (2025, October 28). Ending the shutdown won’t solve Congress’s funding crisis.

WSJ. (2025, November 13). What to know as the federal government reopens.

(Additional sources cited inline throughout, including YouTube coverage and news features on aviation, SNAP, and worker impacts.)

Why the Government Shut Down — And Who’s Really to Blame