As the U.S. government works to pass the remaining bills in regard to funding before their Jan. 30 deadline, we take a look back at the effects of the 2025 government shutdown.
On Oct. 1, 2025 at 11:01 CST, something monumental happened in America. The U.S. government, under President Trump, shut down. The government stayed shut down for 43 days.
“Since 1976, the U.S. government has shut down 20 times,” according to NBC News. There were no shutdowns from 1995 to 2013, however there have been three in 12 years since then. Presidents that government shutdowns have happened under include presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump. The most government shutdowns have happened under presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, with eight and five times respectively.
Government shutdowns are often very short and don’t have a prolonged effect on the country. In fact, out of the 20 times a government shutdown has happened since 1976, 13 of these shutdowns have been under 10 days.
However, government shutdowns have also been very long at times. The current shutdown is the most extreme example of this, lasting 43 days.
However, before the shutdown, “the most recent was also the longest one in U.S. history, when a disagreement over funding for Trump’s border wall closed the government for 34 full days in December 2018 into January 2019,” stated NBC. The second longest shutdown was from December of 1995 to January of 1996 under President Bill Clinton.
These long government shutdowns can have more severe consequences. One example is the effects of the government shutdown which occurred under President Donald Trump from December of 2018 to January 2019 lasting 35 days.
“It began on Dec. 22, 2018, fueled by Democrats’ refusal to meet President Trump’s demand for funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border,” reported NPR. The five week long shutdown cost the U.S. about $3 billion in lost GDP or gross domestic product (the total value of all goods and services produced within a country’s borders per quarter year). However, the 2025 shutdown could be worse.
Every government shutdown happens for a reason, and the most recent government shutdown is no different.
According to BBC, “The shutdown happened because Republicans and Democrats could not agree (Democrats wanted an extension of tax credits, Republicans wanted cuts to government health agencies) to pass a bill funding government services into October and beyond.”
With the way that the U.S. government works, all branches of the government need to agree on spending plans before they are signed into law. This means that in a situation where the branches of government have different parties in charge of bills, it can be significantly more difficult to pass into law.
The three branches of government include the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. The executive branch came up with the aforementioned bill and the judicial branch didn’t have much of a problem, so it was just down to the legislative branch’s opinion. The two parties within the legislative branch could not agree to pass the bill, which led to the shutdown.
The Republicans currently hold a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. However, “they are short of the 60 votes needed to pass the spending bill, which gives Democrats some negotiating power,” according to BBC. Democrats wanted an extension on expiring tax credits which would be a reversal of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. They also opposed spending cuts to government health agencies.
A stopgap (made to stop the disagreement on budget temporarily) bill was passed in the House to try to avoid the government shutdown, but it did not get passed in the Senate. This led to the first U.S. government shutdown in nearly seven years.
The historic shutdown affected millions of Americans. According to AlJazeera, “around 750,000 federal employees have been furloughed, millions of Americans go without food assistance, and air travel is disrupted across the country.”
Due to unpaid air traffic officers, flights were also heavily impacted. Many flights were delayed and cancelled every day. According to Flight Aware, on Nov. 13, 2025 by 10:59 p.m., there were a total of 3,895 total flight delays within, into, or out of the United States. Not only that, but there were over 1,000 total cancellations within, into, or out of the U.S.
Millions of Americans have been affected by the loss of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and a Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday, Nov. 11 helped some Americans gain these benefits back while others lose them.
Per Newsweek, “The decision keeps in place a patchwork system in which some recipients have received their full monthly benefits while others have not received any assistance.”
To help the active-duty personnel, the government signed their yearly bill going over military policy and the Pentagon budget on October 16. “The annual National Defense Authorization Act cleared easily Thursday in a blowout vote, after Senate leaders struck a deal to break a monthlong impasse (disagreement) on the measure,” according to Politico.
Overall, the government shutdown caused a lot of harm to U.S. government workers and the economy. Shorter term bills were passed to help alleviate the effects of the shutdown on military workers, however Americans were still affected. The shutdown has now seemingly ended and America is looking to get back on track.
However, America might not be completely free from government shutdowns. The House and Senate need to agree on at least nine annual bills in order to avoid a second shutdown which would start on Jan. 31, 2026.