Congress has not passed legislation to fund the federal government for fiscal year 2025 (FY 2025) that begins October 1, 2024. The House of Representatives on September 18 tried — and failed — to pass legislation to fund the government into March 2025. The good news, however, is that Congress is expected to fund the federal government before the current funding expires at midnight, September 30. Congress will return to Washington, D.C., after the election — and several months into FY 2025 — to finish its work on funding the government for the remainder of FY 2025 and to finish work on other issues it was not able to complete before the elections.

If Congress did its job in a timely manner, both the House of Representatives and the Senate would pass 12 appropriations bills that would be signed into law by the President on or before September 30. To date, the House of Representatives has passed five of 12 bills; the Senate has passed zero. There is not sufficient time for Congress to pass all the appropriations bills before September 30, so instead, Congress will need to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund the government at current (i.e., FY 2024) levels until a date certain, most likely into mid- or late December. This will allow members of Congress to go home and campaign for several weeks before returning to Washington, D.C., in November to finish the work of funding the government in a “lame duck” session of Congress.

Going back to 1980, the federal government has shut down — in whole or in part — ten times due to lack of funding. The two shortest shutdowns occurred in 1984 and 1986, lasting only several hours. The longest full government shutdown, 16 days, occurred in 2013; the longest partial shutdown, 35 days, was in 2018-2019 and had a significant impact on industries such as the chemical industry that rely on government action to bring products to market.

We expect Congress to keep the government open by passing a CR before September 30 to fund the government until December, at which time the country may again face the prospect of another government shutdown.