There’s a lot of news these days, and it can be hard to parse through it all. What’s important and what can you ignore? One story that’s been overshadowed is the current U.S. government shutdown, which has now lasted more than two weeks. Essentially, only necessary parts of the government are still running. You could try to chalk up the shutdown to the usual Washington, D.C. dysfunction that continually plagues our country and move on with your life, but the repercussions of that dysfunction are not something to ignore. The government shutdown and the reasons for it threaten both our nation’s finances and our democratic system.
The first, and most obvious, way the government shutdown impacts people is in their wallets. Under the parameters of the shutdown, no federal workers are paid, even those that have to come into work, like air traffic controllers. During previous shutdowns, back pay was given out, but the Trump administration has threatened to withhold this money. This is despite the fact Trump signed a 2019 law that fully established back pay for federal workers, a decision that came after the last shutdown. The lack of pay, at least for now, directly endangers the financial stability of federal workers and their families.
Colleges are also affected by the shutdown. Currently, all federal funding for research has been put on hold. As a Research 1 institution, the University of Connecticut often relies on this funding to explore and develop new projects, so these events are especially pressing for UConn. If the shutdown lasts for more than a few weeks, UConn will also encounter problems with giving out federal student aid. As the shutdown drags on and funding continues to lapse, higher education will inevitably face the prospect of reductions in research and an inability to give out student loans.
Issues of money don’t end with the shutdown itself. One of the main reasons Congress found itself unable to agree on a resolution to fund the government was the problem of healthcare. The Democrats argue that any funding bill needs to include an extension for Obamacare health insurance tax credits, which expire in December. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s program director on Obamacare, Cynthia Cox, the impacts on ordinary Americans will be severe. Without these benefits, millions of Americans stand to pay twice as much on average for their healthcare premiums, and many bills are going to go up far more than that. For families already struggling to pay their bills, this is an untenable and disastrous increase, and those that once felt secure might find themselves scraping for money as well.
The fight over healthcare indicates a larger catastrophe: the federal government is broken. Even if Congress had been able to pass a continuing resolution before the shutdown took effect, it was only set to last a month. That means another fight would just take place again, and the entire country would experience a sickening sense of deja vu. You might recall that we almost had a shutdown in March this year, when Democrats eventually let a funding bill through.
This constant battling is far from conducive to a functioning government, but the Trump administration is enjoying the pain. Throughout Trump’s second term, attempts to fire federal workers has been a recurring theme, and he recently used the shutdown as an excuse to lay off more than 4,000 people, despite the fact that no previous shutdowns have led to reductions in force. Russell Vought, Trump’s budget chief and co-author of Project 2025, has wanted to shrink the government for years, and those plans are coming to fruition. Although the layoffs were just blocked in court, the law has rarely stopped Trump in his second term. If Trump’s new reductions in force go through, it will only bring more suffering and stress to both fired workers and those that must toil on with their departments torn to shreds.
When the president considers a government shutdown beneficial to his agenda, we’ve truly lost the plot. As the leader of the country, Trump is supposed to bring lawmakers together to reopen the government, but instead he has gone ahead with mass firings and mocking Democrats. For a man who once said “the president would be blamed” in the event of a shutdown, he sure doesn’t seem concerned about adding to the dysfunction.
Even though Republicans control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, it seems there is no recourse to fix this impasse. Driven by petty and partisan considerations, no one has been willing to negotiate seriously, least of all Trump. The shutdown fight has laid bare that our government, quite simply, does not work. This is something many have argued for years, but now it is undeniable. With financial and democratic stability under threat, the government shutdown affects us all, no matter how much we may try to ignore it.