Benefits Gone in a SNAP? Government Shutdowns, Budget Brinkmanship, and What It Means for the US
On the evening of Wednesday, November 12, US President Donald Trump signed off on a Senate-passed funding package that had received House approval earlier that evening. This ended the longest government shutdown in US history, which began on October 1 and lasted 43 days.
While the shutdown received significant media attention, the specific mechanics behind such an event are not always understood. The root of this phenomenon is the nineteenth-century Anti-Deficiency Act (ADA), which serves to ban the US government from entering into contracts without approval from both chambers of Congress; simply put, it sets standards for the allocation and spending of government money by federal agencies and actors.
From the introduction of the ADA until 1980, the Act was interpreted to mean that government agencies were intended to continue operating even when their funding had lapsed. Indeed, from September 1977 to April 1980, when the Act was reinterpreted, government funding lapsed five times for periods of several days, yet the US government remained open. This changed in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter’s Attorney General, Benjamin Civiletti, called for a stricter interpretation of the ADA that ended the precedent of government agencies continuing to operate under the expectation that funds would soon be provided.
The shutdown that began on October 1, 2025—the first day of fiscal year 2026 for the US government and therefore the date on which a new budget would come into effect—was the eleventh one since this 1980 reinterpretation. While the Republican-controlled House passed a short-term funding plan on September 19, the 53 Senate Republicans failed to convince their Democratic colleagues to support the plan to meet the minimum 60-vote threshold. The specific concern of Senate Democrats was the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also referred to as Obamacare, which provides health insurance to low-income Americans. Democrats sought to extend the program’s tax credits, without which those enrolled would see their insurance premiums rise dramatically. Republicans were unwilling to concede ACA credits, while Democrats were unwilling to pass the spending bill without them, resulting in the budget vote failing. As a result, all but a few government functions ceased operations beginning on October 1.
The government employees deemed non-essential were furloughed, that is, put on a mandatory unpaid leave. Essential workers include those employed by agencies that remained operational following the funding lapse, such as law enforcement and the postal service. Among workers who remained on the job despite the government’s inability to compensate them, air traffic controllers became a focal point of the shutdown-induced chaos as America’s airports failed to run at regular capacity due to the high number of staff calling out sick.
Another consequence of the funding lapse that received significant public attention was the reduction in benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a federal program administered by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) that provides financial relief to enable low-income adults to purchase groceries. SNAP is federally funded, but appropriations are provided to citizens by state governments. Though a lower court order demanded that the federal government find emergency funding to prevent SNAP from being affected by the shutdown, the Supreme Court suspended this order, and the federal government subsequently directed states to disperse only 65 per cent of regular benefits, sparking public outrage and resistance by select states.
While SNAP and air travel may have garnered media attention, particularly as the Thanksgiving holiday in late November raised concerns about both food security and travel, the shutdown’s negative effects were more extensive. The shutdown is believed to have cost 60,000 private sector jobs in addition to federal employees going unpaid for weeks, and the total cost to the American economy is estimated at $90 billion USD.
The passage of a funding package on November 12 brought the shutdown to an end, containing provisions that extended funding for most agencies until January 30, 2026. Notably absent from the bill are ACA appropriations, which will be voted on once more in mid-December 2025.
This reopening, however, does not indicate a promise of stability. In fact, the opposite is true: viewed in the context of the trend towards longer shutdowns, which bring with them more severe conditions for Americans who depend on government programs and services, these events are cause for significant concern. Shutdowns and the negotiations surrounding them demonstrate “budget brinkmanship,” referring to a tactic of willingness to allow funding to lapse in hopes of gaining—or avoiding—budgetary concessions. And while brinkmanship may have effectively defused the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the strategy must be judged far more harshly in the shutdown context.
Case in point, the Democrats failed to win an extension of credits for the ACA. Negotiations are unlikely to unfold differently when they are revisited this month, rendering another shutdown very possible. Millions of Americans endured six weeks of intense financial uncertainty, and yet all the Democrats have to show for their holdout is brief funding extensions and looming negotiations with a Republican Party that is emboldened by resisting what Trump describes as the democrats’ “extortion” of American taxpayers. In short, Republicans feel they have ‘won’ through their refusal to concede on the ACA, though with more debates to be had, Democrats have not yet ‘lost’ on the program. What is undeniable is that the American public has lost.
Government shutdowns are demonstrably against the best interests of the American people. And yet, with the two longest shutdowns in US history being the two most recent ones (beginning on October 1, 2025, and the 35-day lapse in 2019 during Trump’s first term), those in government have clearly become increasingly comfortable with suspending essential programs over long periods of time. Since Civiletti’s interpretation of the ADA in 1980, the ability to shut down the government by failing to pass a spending bill has existed. It is only recently, however, that this opportunity has been seized and allowed to continue for weeks at a time, despite the devastating effects on the nation (on an individual level and a national economic one) growing worse by the day.
The decline in institutional forbearance—the unwritten norm of exercising restraint despite the existence of legal capabilities to act otherwise (in this case, to shut down the government)—is but one element in the growing concern for America’s democratic backsliding. This is not to say that either of the mainstream parties intended to do harm to the American people by maintaining its bargaining position and thus keeping doors shut. It does appear, however, that both sides have become increasingly willing to separate the tangible hardships of Americans under a shutdown from the political budget battles that cause them. Budget brinkmanship provides Congress with a way to advance its programmatic interests, but it is abundantly clear that this strategy, as recently employed, willfully neglects the interests these politicians were elected to represent. Should this disconnect from civilian concerns worsen, the US risks its democracy looking less representative and more delegative by the day… or worse, when compounded with other credible threats of backsliding, looking far less like democracy overall.
Edited by Madeleine Glover
“American Flag in Zion Canyon” by ZionNPS is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
