On Oct. 1, Congress missed the deadline to pass a budget for federal agencies, leading to a shutdown.
For days, Congress debated appropriations bills — the annual measures that fund federal agencies for the next fiscal year, which began Wednesday.
A government shutdown signifies that all nonessential federally funded agencies will either cease operations, lose a significant portion of their funding, or furlough a substantial number of their employees – meaning they would be on mandatory leave from their jobs.
Essential agencies — many of which are directly related to public safety — will keep running. In the past, agencies such as Homeland Security, health care services, air traffic control, Social Security, and law enforcement have been recognized as essential.
Non-essential agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service, Food and Drug Administration, and Smithsonian museums, will shut down until Congress reaches a funding agreement.
Because of the likelihood that the shutdown was going to occur, many agencies sent out an email to their employees Tuesday evening letting them know they would be furloughed. Employees were told to clock in Wednesday to finish up ongoing jobs before leaving indefinitely.
Early Tuesday evening, the Senate was presented with two temporary funding bills — known as stopgap bills; both were rejected, one of them considered the final chance to prevent the shutdown.
Because both bills were rejected so late on Tuesday night, many news outlets described the shutdown “inevitable,” as it was highly unlikely 100 senators would agree to the bill and move so quickly to have it put into law.
Some thought otherwise.
“There is no certainty in what is going to happen; experts could think one thing, and it can go in a completely different direction. It is just so uncertain,” Joseph Zeman, criminal justice, government, and U.S. history teacher at West Chicago Community High School, said.
Throughout the past week, Democrats advocated for additional funding to support the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in negotiations over appropriations.
“The Democrats want to shut it down, so when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs,” President Donald Trump said. “So we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected.”
Many Democrats in the House countered that the shutdown either doesn’t change anything or makes it easier for the administration to cut federal agencies.
“Donald Trump has been shutting down the government,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md, said.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he believes layoffs are inevitable, with or without the shutdown.
“I think the record shows that he is firing people regardless of the shutdown,” Blumenthal said.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a lawsuit against the administration hours before the shutdown, suggesting that President Trump and the Office of Management and Budget Director Ross Vought exceeded their legal authority to recommend the layoffs.
“Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal — it’s immoral and unconscionable,” Everett Kelley, director of the AFGE, said.
Although the past government shutdown lasted 34 days, from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019, under the Trump administration’s first term, there is no telling how long this shutdown could last or what it could mean for the U.S. For West Chicago residents, possible effects could include delays in student financial aid processing, reduced federal support for public health services, and travel disruptions at Chicago-area airports.
