Could This Be the Best Government Shutdown Ever?
Take your opportunities for smaller government where you find them.
Here we go again. As I write, politicians are trying to gin up a new panic over a looming "government shutdown." We've seen this before as Democrats and Republicans play chicken over their clashing funding priorities, with a partial suspension of federal activities threatened if they can't come to a deal.
Unfortunately, the government never really shuts down, and the two parties always work out an agreement that involves spending a lot more money. The worst that happens is that some people are inconvenienced for a few days, as the only things that really cease to function are public-facing operations such as parks and offices—deliberately so, to maintain the illusion that something important is happening. What might be different this time, though, is that there's a chance to use the impasse to reduce the federal work force.
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When Spending Too Much Isn't Enough
The latest clash over passing a funding bill for the federal government is Democrats' insistence that the legislation include extensions for Obamacare subsidies to address a problem that, as Paige Winfield Cunningham noted for The Washington Post, "even supporters of the Affordable Care Act fight admit is a flaw in the original law: It wasn't generous enough to make plans affordable." Having built much of their eroding reputation on the cobbled-together public-private health care coverage scheme, Democrats need to prop it up with more taxpayer money to keep it functioning.
Republicans aren't especially interested in keeping the flagship Democratic legislation afloat. That doesn't mean they're necessarily thriftier. Having largely abandoned their small-government credentials (with a few notable exceptions), the GOP wants to spend too much money—though less than the Democrats—on its own projects. Those projects place special emphasis on defense and the Department of Homeland Security, with trillions of dollars in projected deficits for the foreseeable future.
Republicans hold a majority, but Democratic votes are needed to move funding bills in the Senate. So far, Democrats have refused to budge in what The Wall Street Journal described as "a stark turnaround for a party that often lambasted Republicans as irresponsible for threatening shutdowns in the past."
About Those Phony 'Government Shutdowns'
That means we get a kabuki-theater government shutdown. Museums and national parks will close and federal offices will furlough workers who will be unavailable to give their usual bad tax advice or slowly process forms while most of the non-public-facing work continues behind the scenes.
"The vast majority of the federal government is still in operation, shutdown or no shutdown," attorney Timothy Snowball commented for the Pacific Legal Foundation in 2019. "Even among the 8% of the federal budget that is not currently funded because of the shutdown, only 'non-essential' programs and employees are affected. For 'essential' employees it is business as usual."
Federal employees are, overall, better-compensated than their private sector counterparts. According to a 2024 Congressional Budget Office analysis, "The federal government would have decreased its spending on total compensation by 5 percent if it had adjusted the cost of pay for its employees to match the compensation of their private-sector counterparts." Even so, federal workers will inevitably cry poverty for interviewers while they're furloughed and not drawing pay—even though they'll automatically get all back pay once the shutdown concludes.
At most, a government shutdown is usually just a new excuse for politicians to posture in front of television cameras. This time, though, there's a chance the federal work force might come out the other end of the shutdown a little smaller.
This Time Could Be Different
"The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans," The Guardian reported last week. "In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is 'not consistent with the president's priorities.'"
The mentioned OMB memo points out that "with respect to those Federal programs whose funding would lapse and which are otherwise unfunded, such programs are no longer statutorily required to be carried out." It continues: "Therefore, consistent with applicable law, including the requirements of 5 C.F.R. part 351, agencies are directed to use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities (PPAs) that satisfy all three of the following conditions: (1) discretionary funding lapses on October 1, 2025; (2) another source of funding, such as H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21) is not currently available; and (3) the PPA is not consistent with the President's priorities."
Importantly, the memo adds: "Once fiscal year 2026 appropriations are enacted, agencies should revise their RIFs as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions."
We could see more than the usual theatrical finger-pointing and interviews of suffering Department of Education employees this time around. The government could reopen its public-facing functions after a few days, or maybe a couple of weeks (the longest shutdown was 35 days from the end of 2018 through the beginning of 2019), with a trimmed payroll.
That would, of course, be the best government shutdown ever.
There's no guarantee this will happen, of course. Politico's Sophia Cai suggests "OMB Director Russ Vought is using the threat of permanent job cuts as leverage" to get Democrats to drop their demands and approve the GOP spending plan. Democrats may blink and end the opportunity for easy work force reductions.
Then again, Our Revolution, a group backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), surveyed its members and found "overwhelming support for Democrats holding the line in the shutdown fight." That's an important signal for the increasingly left-leaning Democrats, and one that could clear the way for a shutdown and work force reductions.
Following the relative disappointment of the Department of Government Efficiency, we should seize any opportunity to shrink the government that we can. If that opportunity comes in the form of one of the rare government shutdowns that's actually meaningful, so be it.
