CNN
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Facing intense pressure over the threat of a shutdown in less than two days, lawmakers are racing to push through a government funding plan by Friday’s midnight deadline.
Lawmakers last passed a stopgap funding bill in December, averting a shutdown at the time. That measure, signed by then-President Joe Biden, extended funding to mid-March.
If the government does shut down starting Saturday, it would not be the first one for President Donald Trump. He presided over the longest government shutdown in four decades during his first term.
The president placed the blame for the current potential government shutdown on congressional Democrats.
“If there’s a shut down, it’s only going to be because of Democrats, and they would really be taking away a lot from our country, and from the people of our country,” Trump said in remarks from the Oval Office Thursday.
Here’s what Americans could soon face if Congress doesn’t approve a government funding bill by midnight on Friday:
Furloughed workers and suspended services
Since Congress has not approved appropriations for any federal departments, all would be affected.
Every agency has its own set of plans and procedures for a shutdown. The plans include how many employees would be furloughed, which employees are considered essential and would work without pay, how long it would take to wind down operations in the hours before a shutdown and which activities would come to a halt. Those plans can vary from shutdown to shutdown.
The impact of a shutdown differs each time, and it’s unclear how agencies would handle it now, especially since Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government has wreaked havoc on their operations and workforces.
But the consequences could be felt early.
Nearly 900,000 workers would be furloughed without pay, while more than 1.4 million essential employees would have to report to work – but about 750,000 of them would continue to be paid since their salaries funded through other sources, according to Rachel Snyderman, managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. (She noted that these estimates do not include the layoffs and departures that have occurred in the early weeks of the Trump administration.)
Previous shutdowns have closed national parks and museums, stalled food inspections, canceled immigration hearings and delayed some federal lending to homebuyers and small businesses, among other impacts. Though air traffic controllers have to remain on the job, many called in sick during the most recent shutdown, snarling flights.
Some essential government functions continue even if agencies shut down. Notably, Social Security recipients will receive their monthly payments, and Medicare and Medicaid benefits will continue.
All of the nearly 100,000 workers at the Internal Revenue Service will remain on the job during a shutdown because it’s the tax filing season, according to its shutdown contingency plan, which was recently updated. The agency’s operations will continue using funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
The Social Security Administration pointed to a contingency plan from September that showed that only 8,100 of its roughly 59,000 employees at that time would be furloughed if the government shut down. The plan noted that people would still be able to apply for benefits, request appeals, change their addresses, among other services, but they would not be able to correct their earnings records or get replacement Medicare cards.
About half of the State Department’s nearly 30,000 employees would be furloughed in a government shutdown, the agency said in a recent contingency plan. Consular operations both domestically and abroad would continue to handle passports, visas and other matters if there are sufficient fees, and consulates and embassies abroad would be operational for national security reasons. Among the functions that would cease are making new obligations for certain grants and contracts.
Other agencies contacted by CNN either didn’t return a request for comment or did not provide details on their shutdown plans.
Government agencies had to prepare multiple times for a shutdown during the last fiscal year since Congress repeatedly punted approving a full-year funding plan before finally passing one in March 2024.
During Trump’s first term, a 35-day impasse shuttered part of the government just before Christmas in 2018. It ended in late January 2019, when Trump agreed to a temporary funding measure that did not include billions of dollars for a border wall.
However, the shutdown wreaked havoc on many Americans and federal employees, including causing flight delays, canceling immigration hearings and making it harder for some families to obtain student loans.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Betsy Klein, Donald Judd and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.
