Why another shutdown showdown looms around the corner
By Michael Jones
While you’re settling into Thanksgiving dinner, Black Friday shopping, holiday movies and New Year’s resolutions, I hope you leave room for one more item on your end-of-year to-do list: bracing for the possibility of another government shutdown in just a couple of months.
Sure, Congress technically reopened the government last week. However, almost nothing in the deal it passed to keep the lights on through the end of January prevents us from ending up right back at the brink. In fact, full-year funding for SNAP and WIC, plus protections for federal workers against mass layoffs, remove two of the political weapons the Trump administration exploited during the shutdown that just ended.
Trust me: As someone who covered every minute of the longest funding lapse in American history over the past almost seven weeks, no one would love for this warning to be unnecessary more than me. But after talking with lawmakers and senior aides, looking at the congressional calendar, and drawing on years of covering these high-stakes funding fights, it would be political malpractice to rule out the third shutdown of Trump’s two presidencies.
The case comes down to three factors—and none inspire much confidence.
1. The hardest funding bills are still ahead.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will likely attempt to jump-start the next round of 2026 spending bills by rolling several of them into a single package known as a “minibus.” It would bundle the bills that fund the Pentagon, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce, and Justice, as well as NASA and the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.
However, to launch the process, he’d need 60 senators to agree to move forward—and it’s not clear that Democratic support is there. Some senators are still frustrated with their eight colleagues who voted with most Republicans to reopen the government without an extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits.
Thune would also need all 100 senators to sign off on merging the bills into a single package, so Democratic leaders have been checking internally to see if anyone in their caucus objects. What’s more complicated is that these are the Senate’s versions of the spending bills, so even if they clear the chamber, negotiators will still have to confer with the House, which is pushing for funding levels far closer to the White House’s request—billions less than what Senate appropriators have drafted. For context: the three bills in the package that reopened the government earlier this month went through the same cross-Capitol negotiation.
Beyond the four-bill minibus, Congress still needs to pass measures to fund the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission—agencies all led by Trump loyalists whom Democrats despise. The Homeland Security appropriations bill will be a nightmare due to the public disapproval of President Trump’s mass deportation operations. (Although the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured historic funds into Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer, so it’s unclear how hard Republicans will fight for additional resources.) The bills that fund the Smithsonian Institution and USAID are also outstanding, and could spark debates on the administration’s anti-woke and America First policies.
And I’ve only outlined the procedural obstacles. There are political quagmires that further complicate the government funding process.
In past eras, the Big Four (the two party leaders from each chamber) were able to set politics aside and act like grown-ups to keep the lights on. But Thune sidelined Schumer from the start of bipartisan Senate negotiations during the shutdown showdown. And Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) didn’t even call House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) after Jeffries received a serious death threat.
This animus has extended to the “Four Corners,” the moniker for the top Democratic and Republican leaders on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.
Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) did not vote for the funding bill that reopened the government, even though it included three bills she had directly negotiated.
And House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said that it was unprecedented that the Four Corners did not each sign off on the package before it was brought to the floor. (She was the only top appropriator who did not approve it.)
DeLauro told me she’s concerned Congress will be in the same position at the end of January when the current funding bill expires that it found itself in during the historic impasse that has just concluded.
“There really is a lack of trust,” between the parties and chambers, she added.
2. The Senate phone-records provision deepened mistrust.
The late addition of language dealing with the eight senators whose phone records were accessed in a Jan. 6 probe widened an already massive trust deficit between the chambers and parties at the very moment they needed maximum cooperation.
In case you missed it, the provision in the 2026 Legislative Branch bill makes it unlawful, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2022, to access a senator’s communications data without disclosure. It sets a minimum $500,000 payout per violation, plus attorneys’ fees, with indications that immunity defenses for federal employees could be curtailed—effectively inviting damages claims against the DOJ for the seizure of Jan. 6 records.
Supporters of the provision sold it as a safeguard for privacy and separation of powers, following what they call politicized surveillance. However, good-government groups, legal experts, and lawmakers in both parties have criticized it as self-dealing that redirects taxpayer money to GOP lawmakers as part of a shutdown deal, warning that it creates a privileged legal shield for senators that no other public official—or ordinary citizen—enjoys. Beyond the headlines, the provision could chill how prosecutors and telecoms handle future subpoenas involving Congress, and it may spur discovery fights over who knew what and when, if senators file a lawsuit.
Two House Republicans expressed dissatisfaction during a hearing last week to establish the guidelines for floor debate ahead of the final vote to reopen the government. But they each opposed striking the provision through a Democratic amendment because it would have forced the bill to return to the Senate and delayed the end of the shutdown. (The Senate had already adjourned and most senators were back home during House consideration of the measure and won’t return to session until tomorrow.)
Johnson, who said he was blindsided by the provision and called Thune to express his anger, said the House would vote on a stand-alone bill to repeal it this week to scrap the provision entirely and restore the principle that federal law enforcement should conduct its work without political carve-outs, warning systems, or special compensation for the people being investigated. However, even though the repeal effort is expected to pass the House overwhelmingly, Senate leadership is under no obligation to bring it to the floor for a vote. It is unlikely to do so without pressure from Trump.
3. The ACA subsidy cliff is still unresolved.
Lawmakers still haven’t addressed the looming expiration of the ACA premium tax credits, which is the substantive issue that contributed to the longest shutdown in history. Nothing in the funding bill guarantees that it will be resolved before the year’s end, meaning the same core dispute is just waiting for the next leverage point.
A handful of Senate Democrats are in talks with Republicans on the contours of a bill that would extend the premium tax credits, accompanied by so-called conservative reforms, including income caps to prevent high earners from receiving the subsidies, as well as other proposals aimed at preventing waste, fraud, and abuse. Thune promised Democrats he would allow the bill a floor vote, but it would need at least 13 Republicans to vote for the legislation. FWIW, no Republican voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the American Rescue Plan in 2021 that included the enhanced premium tax credits, or the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which extended them.
Most congressional Democrats and advocacy groups would view any changes to the bill as poison pills rather than compromise, as they consider the removal of their demand for the subsidies to be permanently extended as a sufficient concession. Any eligibility restrictions would likely kick qualified families off coverage or slow enrollment at the very moment Americans are signing up for plans. Democrats also worry that entertaining GOP add-ons now would let Republicans rewrite the basic architecture of the ACA under the guise of fiscal responsibility. And with open enrollment already underway, they argue there’s simply no time—or policy justification—to layer on new eligibility hurdles that could destabilize coverage or spike premiums for millions.
Then there’s the Trump factor.
The president has muscled his way back into the center of the debate, urging Republicans to resurrect their long-abandoned quest to repeal the ACA and replace it with an ill-defined scheme to send money directly to Americans so they can “negotiate” their own health care. Under Trump’s vision, the current insurance framework would be scrapped, and the intermediaries he argues are profiting off subsidies would be eliminated. But Republicans have had 15 years to produce a coherent health-care alternative and have never landed on one. Democrats say the idea of reopening the entire health-policy playbook now, just weeks before millions face steep premium hikes without an extension of the tax credits, is the kind of policy irresponsibility that will cost the GOP the majority next November.
In the meantime, House Democratic leadership has launched a Hail Mary in the form of legislation to force a vote on extending the ACA tax credits for three years—the same period the subsidies were previously extended under the Inflation Reduction Act. The measure, known as a discharge petition, would require at least four Republicans to buck their leadership for it to succeed.
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
