Congress Has 30 Days Before a Government Shutdown Deadline

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) listens during a press conference in Washington on Jan. 7, 2025. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

News Analysis

WASHINGTON—The U.S. government will shut down in 30 days if Congress does not act to fund it. So far, there is no plan to do so.

The government regularly faces the risk of a shutdown when agencies lack the necessary funds to operate. The Constitution requires that any money “drawn from the Treasury” be authorized, or “appropriated,” by Congress, which is responsible for passing the necessary funding bills before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

Since fiscal year 1998, Congress has failed to do so, making it necessary to extend the previous year’s funding levels through continuing resolutions (CRs) to keep the government running.

These CRs last only a short period—at most, a few months—to give Congress more time to complete its work. Often, Congress fails to meet these extensions, resulting in multiple CRs being passed until it finally approves the permanent funding bills, sometimes months after the fiscal year has already begun.

Shortly after passing these bills, Congress begins work on the next year’s budget to meet the Oct. 1 deadline. It usually fails, leading to another CR. This cycle continues year after year.

“This has become the normal mode of business these days. ... Congress really does not have enough time to complete all 12 bills,” Joshua Huder, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told The Epoch Times.

The government is presently in one of those cycles of delay. Fiscal year 2025 began on Oct. 1, 2024.

Amid an election season, Congress passed a CR to extend funding at fiscal year 2024 levels until Dec. 20, 2024. Thereafter, it introduced and passed another CR on the day of the deadline to further extend funding to March 14. By that date, Congress must pass permanent bills, pass another CR, or let the government shut down.

Drafting the Bill

Since the second CR was passed, little has been publicly said about the appropriations process for fiscal year 2025. During the intervening period, President Donald Trump took office, and Republicans have focused on advancing his agenda via the budget reconciliation process.

The process is a special procedure that allows for expedited consideration in passing certain tax, spending, and debt-limit laws that require a simple majority to advance, bypassing the filibuster and the usual 60-vote requirement.

The deadline for congressional action is now 30 days away, with no clarity on when, or even if, permanent funding bills will be passed.

Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.)—chairman of the House Appropriations State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee, which oversees funding for U.S. foreign policy—told The Epoch Times before an Appropriations Committee chairs’ meeting that he could not say whether the process will be completed by March 14 or not.

“I hope to find out,” Díaz-Balart said.

This fiscal year, the delay in the appropriations process has been somewhat intentional. Republicans in 2024, expecting Trump to win the election and the GOP to take control of Congress, said they intended to delay the deadline until early 2025, to draft more conservative spending legislation in the majority.

“I'd rather [the CR] go clear into March in hopes that [Donald] Trump wins the election and then has a chance to put his fingerprints on legislation,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told The Epoch Times in September 2024.

Most of Trump’s policy priorities, as they relate to government funding, are expected to be addressed during the reconciliation process, which will not require Democrat votes to pass.

The appropriations process, by contrast, will be passed as a regular bill, meaning that it will need at least seven Democrat votes in the Senate, assuming all 53 Republicans support it.

This constraint will limit the bill’s content because a bill that is too conservative may alienate Democrats.

“Appropriations bills, whether we like them or not, require 60 votes in the Senate,” Díaz-Balart said. “You can’t do appropriation bills through reconciliation.”

To this end, he signaled to The Epoch Times that the bill likely would not contain significant reductions to the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that has been targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk.

“We can’t take the whole thing out,” Díaz-Balart said of the agency.

Consequences of Inaction

The House and the Senate must pass the same versions of each appropriations bill before the president can sign it into law. Per regular order, Congress would pass 12 appropriations bills—each representing the jurisdiction of one of the 12 appropriations committees in both houses—that fund the government.

In 2024, the House passed five such bills and defeated one, although all those actions were rendered moot after the 118th Congress was dissolved on Jan. 3, 2025.

Now Congress will need to begin the process again, although it is highly unlikely that 12 bills will be introduced separately, as in 2024. Instead, if they proceed, Congress will likely pass one or two omnibus spending packages that consolidate the appropriations into one bill.

Historically, such omnibus bills have exceeded 1,000 pages in length and have been heavily criticized by conservatives, who contend that they lack the time necessary to read the bill after its publication and before the final vote.

There is no guarantee that an appropriations bill will pass. Republicans currently hold a one-seat majority in the House, and many members of their conference—particularly those in the House Freedom Caucus—are perennial critics of government spending at current levels.

This position directly contradicts that of most Senate Democrats and even some Republicans, who refuse to support bills that significantly cut spending. During the 118th Congress, Democratic support in the House was essential for passing all appropriations bills. That support may not be forthcoming again if the bills lean conservative.

The U.S. Capitol on Dec. 20, 2024. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

“All it takes is three Republicans in the House of Representatives to partner with Democrats to stop these bad things from happening legislatively,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in remarks published by his office. “This narrow Republican majority is the smallest that any party has had since the Great Depression.”

If Congress fails to act, its only recourse will be another CR, which would mean funding the government at fiscal year 2024 levels for most, if not all, of fiscal year 2025. This would avert a shutdown but would freeze spending without an allowance for inflation, thus forcing agencies to economize. It would also mean that the government could neither begin spending on new programs nor end spending on older programs.

Previously, executive branch agencies in the Biden administration warned that a “full-year CR” would harm several policy priorities, including national security.

Should another CR not pass, however, the government will shut down. It would be the first shutdown of Trump’s second term, and the third of his presidencies.

During his first term, he presided over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—lasting 35 days from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019—as well as a shorter shutdown from Jan. 20, 2018, to Jan. 23, 2018.

“We’re not trying to cram any of the president’s agenda down there, in an appropriations bill. We’re just trying to reach common ground,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told The Epoch Times on Feb. 12. He cautioned that, absent an agreement, another CR may be introduced.

“A CR is better than a shutdown,” he said.