Shutdown Showdown September 2025: The State of Play 10 Days Out

Unless Congress and the President can reach agreement in the next 10 days, there will be a government shutdown on October 1. Both sides say they do not want that to happen, but both are digging in their heels. Anything can happen at this point, but here is where the situation stands as of September 21, 2025.

Congress has not passed the FY2026 appropriations bills needed to fund the government when the new fiscal year begins on October 1. A Continuing Resolution (CR) is needed to keep the government open until the 12 regular appropriations bills are signed into law. Agencies typically are kept at their current funding levels under a CR and new programs cannot begin nor existing programs terminated.

As commonplace as they are, everyone agrees CRs are not a good way to run the government. Usually agreement is reached on the 12 appropriations bills — often combined together into a single “omnibus” bill — by the end of the year or early in the next, but for the current fiscal year FY2025 agreement was never reached. The government is operating under a “full year” CR.

They are trying to avoid that this time and pass a short-term CR while negotiations continue on the 12 bills. Such action typically is routine, but occasionally it devolves into partisan clashes causing temporary shutdowns of non-essential government operations for hours, days or weeks. The longest shutdown was 35 days during the first Trump Administration: December 22, 2018-January 25, 2019.

On Friday, the House passed a Republican-sponsored “clean” CR (H.R. 5371) that extends current funding through November 21. However, Democrats objected that Republicans refused to negotiate with them on the text. In particular Democrats want to include a provision extending Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that otherwise will expire at the end of the year. They introduced an alternative CR (H.R. 5450), but it was not brought to the floor separately. In the end, the House voted almost along party lines to pass the Republican bill 217-212.

Both the House and Senate have been long-scheduled to be in recess this coming week for the Jewish holidays, so the Senate took up the bill immediately after it passed the House.

The Senate debated both the House Republican bill and the Democratic alternative (S. 2882), defeating both on mostly partisan lines. Unlike the House where bills are approved by a simple majority, in the Senate legislation like this needs 60 votes to pass. The House bill failed 44-48 and the Democratic alternative failed 47-45.

The House and  Senate were supposed to return on September 29, giving them two more legislative days to reach agreement. But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) instead decided to extend the House recess to October 1, forcing the Senate to choose between passing the House bill or causing a shutdown since the House now won’t be in town to approve any amendments. Both chambers must agree to identical text.

Senate Republicans led by Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Democrats led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are currently at loggerheads. Each side is blaming the other. The only place they seem to agree is that President Trump holds the cards if a shutdown is to be avoided.

Schumer and his house counterpart, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), wrote a letter to Trump yesterday demanding a meeting. They insist bipartisan agreement is needed, not a bill that “continues the Republican assault on healthcare.” Trump later told reporters he’d meet with them, but did not expect it to have any impact.

Anything can happen in Washington in 10 days, so a shutdown is not certain even though it’s looking more likely than not at this moment.