Government Shutdowns and America’s Broken Democracy

Here We Go Again

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Caucus. Courtesy Chip Somdebvilla/Getty.

The US does not face the specter of a government shutdown every September because of policy disagreements or financial constraints. Rather, democratic accountability has been so eroded that elected officials have no incentive to compromise – to do the hard work of politics – and devise real solutions that serve ordinary Americans.

WASHINGTON, DC – It’s September in Washington, and everyone knows what that means: the United States Congress is scrambling to agree on a budget before the fiscal year ends on September 30, in order to avoid a government shutdown. This was not always the case. Historically, Congress spent this month tying up loose ends, after spending the year reviewing White House budget requests, listening to lobbyists, and inserting whatever pork-barrel projects were needed to ensure the national budget legislation’s timely passage. But for the last three decades, dysfunction and deadlock have ruled.

This is a bipartisan failure. The last time Congress passed a full slate of appropriations bills (12 in all) on time was in 1996. Regardless of who has held a majority in which house of Congress – and even when a single party controlled both, as the Republicans do today – the budget process was marked by disorder, fecklessness, and gridlock. Meanwhile, US government debt has skyrocketed, from about $5.2 trillion (64.9% of GDP) in 1996 to $37 trillion (more than 120% of GDP) this year. As the “national debt clock” near New York City’s Times Square reminds us, this figure represents more than $109,000 (and counting) for every person in the country.

While both parties share the blame, each is contributing to the current dysfunction in its own way. US Republicans now fully control not only Congress but also the executive (and with it the entire federal bureaucracy), but they need the support of at least seven Democratic senators to break a filibuster and avoid a government shutdown. Rather than compromise, however, they seem to be banking on Democrats bowing to their demands, including deep reductions in health-care spending. That is, after all, what happened in March: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer convinced enough of his fellow Democrats to vote for a stopgap spending bill, which included some $13 billion in cuts to non-defense funding, in the name of keeping the government running.

The Democrats may well prove the GOP wrong. After receiving angry – and well-deserved – criticism from their colleagues and constituents, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appear to be taking a tougher stand, with the removal of health-care subsidies for low-income Americans as their “red line.”

But time and again since Trump’s return to the White House, the Democrats have proved unwilling or unable to mount any effective opposition to his agenda. Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has slashed funding for critical US programs, agencies, and institutions – from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to the National Institutes of Health – even rescinding funds already appropriated by Congress. It has also carried out mass firings of government employees, without any real assessment – or, in many cases, understanding – of their responsibilities or performance.

In response, the Democrats have complained loudly, written stern letters, and held forgettable press conferences. Rather than use the (admittedly limited) tools they have at their disposal to rein in Trump and his Republican enablers, they continue to pretend that they can engage in good-faith negotiations with a party that has done nothing but spurn bipartisanship in recent years. By behaving as if US institutions were still functioning, the likes of Schumer and Jeffries alienate their own voters and embolden the GOP to ratchet up their intransigence and extremism.

The American people have little role to play in all of this, because the vast majority of congressional districts have been gerrymandered beyond the point of competition. In the 2024 presidential election, only 37 of the 435 US House seats were decided by five percentage points or less. Largely free of electoral consequences, US legislators seek to please their wealthy donors, not their constituents. This is as true of the Democrats as it is of the Republicans, though in the GOP’s case, currying favor with Trump is also essential.

With Americans beholden to a political class that cares not a wit for them or their needs, it should come as no surprise that US real wages have barely budged in decades. This is not lost on voters: some 43% no longer identify with either major party. With few options for effecting change, however, frustration often gives way to apathy. In the 2022 midterm elections, younger, female, and African American voters – key Democratic constituencies – were less likely to participate. As elected leaders increasingly choose their voters, rather than vice versa, accountability declines, and the eddy of dysfunction becomes a whirlpool of instability.

As Congress faces its 29th consecutive budget impasse, it should be clear that the US federal budget process is broken. The US does not face the specter of a government shutdown every September because of policy disagreements or financial constraints, but because democratic accountability has been so eroded that elected officials have no incentive to compromise – to do the hard work of politics – and devise real solutions. They simply roll along on the rickety wagon of the state, ordinary Americans be damned, secure in the knowledge that they and the well-heeled interests to whom they are beholden will continue to rake in benefits.

This article originally ran in Project Syndicate. You can read the online version here.