There is a high risk of a shutdown in the USA. Answers to the main questions

The work of the US government may be paralyzed due to the termination of funding. Republicans in Congress have prepared a temporary draft budget and even passed it through the House of Representatives, but Democrats intend to block the document in the upper house of Congress. What is the essence of the disagreement about the project, what will be the consequences of its rejection and how to avoid a shutdown — in the Izvestia article.

Why is the US government threatened with a shutdown?

• The government's work is terminated if the sources of its financing are not identified. As US President Donald Trump pursues a large-scale management reform, drastically reducing the number of civil servants, Republicans have prepared a temporary draft budget for the tax period until September 30, 2025. He increases spending on defense and border protection, reduces spending on non-defense projects by $13 billion, and virtually cancels the current annual budget of the District of Columbia, which includes Washington.

• The interim budget has already been supported by the U.S. House of Representatives. But in the Senate, Democrats strongly opposed the document because it runs counter to their promises to voters: it increases spending on defense and border protection and reduces spending on public services and foreign aid.

• The Democratic Party also opposes the activities of the Government Efficiency Department, which is headed by multibillionaire Elon Musk. At the same time, some senators believe that the shutdown will become another argument for the Trump administration in favor of layoffs of civil servants and cost cuts.

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What will the Democrats do?

• The Democratic Party was faced with a difficult choice: Trump has already announced that if the vote fails, the Democrats will be responsible for shutting down the government.

• The Democrats expect to exchange votes for the project for the adoption of an amendment to extend funding for 30 days, which will allow them to "save face" in front of voters and avoid a shutdown, and later block the implementation of the interim budget. They have virtually no chance of winning, because the Democratic Party is in the minority in the Senate. At the same time, the Republican project will also not be able to advance without the support of the Democrats: despite the fact that the Republicans won a majority in the Senate — 53 out of 100 seats, they will need at least eight additional votes to overcome the technical threshold of 60 votes.

• The leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, announced on March 13 that he would vote for the Republican document in order to keep the government running. He added that the shutdown would give Trump "the keys to the city, state and country," and its consequences for Americans would be much worse than if the bill were passed.

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What will be the consequences of the shutdown?

• Due to the termination of funding, the US government may stop work on March 14 at 23:59 Eastern American time (March 15 at 07:59 Moscow time— Ed.). From this moment on, government employees will stop receiving salaries and some of them will be sent on unpaid leave. Life support workers, law enforcement agencies, and other critical structures will continue to work, but without pay — at least until the new budget is approved.

• Recipients of social benefits, pensions, and veteran's benefits should not be affected by the shutdown, as all programs aimed at medical and social security will continue to operate. National parks will be closed, and transportation difficulties may also occur. Active-duty military personnel will continue to operate, but half of the Pentagon's civilian employees may be fired.

• Representatives of the Democratic Party also suggest that the termination of government funding will be an additional argument for reducing the number of staff: previously, the DOGE department announced plans to reduce more than 2 million civil servants. The shutdown will have no effect on the salaries of congressmen and the president of the country, while some of the staff of Congress and the White House will be sent on unpaid leave.

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How often have there been shutdowns before?

• Since 1977, there have been 21 cases of a shutdown in the United States. US President Ronald Reagan became the record holder in terms of their number — during his two terms of office, the government stopped work eight times. During the tenure of President Jimmy Carter, there were five shutdowns, in total, the government did not work for 56 days.

• The longest shutdown in history was at the turn of 2018 and 2019, during Trump's first term as president — the government shutdown lasted 35 days. The reason was the disagreement of Congress on the allocation of $ 5.7 billion for the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico.

• The government shutdown left about 800,000 federal employees without salaries and led to the shutdown of government agency websites, while the damage to the U.S. economy, according to S&P Global, amounted to more than $6 billion. As a result, Trump had to give in and withdraw his demands.

How does this situation differ from the cases of the shutdown in the past?

• The government shutdown occurred repeatedly and became the peak of the confrontation between the Republican and Democratic Parties. Due to the polarization in Congress, the former US administration failed to adopt a full-fledged financial document: in the last months of Joe Biden's presidency, the interim budget was adopted twice, in September and December 2024.

• Despite the ongoing campaign by the Democratic Party to discredit Trump, some of them rightly fear that voters will not forgive them for the new shutdown, because first of all, the government shutdown will hit public sector employees. Americans have already suffered from inflation during the Biden administration, and many families do not have a "financial cushion" in case salaries are delayed.

During the preparation of the material, Izvestia interviewed:

• Senior Lecturer at the Department of American Studies at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University, Candidate of Political Sciences Yulia Boguslavskaya;
• Viktor Mizin, a political scientist and researcher at the IMEMO RAS Center for International Security.