The clock continues to tick as lawmakers in Congress race to avoid a late-December government shutdown.
On Thursday, House Republicans announced a new proposal to fund the government but right-wing members of the Republican party balked at the agreement. However, President-elect Donald Trump gave his approval to the proposal, calling it a “success” in the nation’s capital.
Trump’s comments come after he joined allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in urging sitting lawmakers to vote against a bipartisan agreement earlier this week to keep the government funded through March.
The House met on Thursday night to try and push a government funding bill through, but fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill, making the possibility of a government shutdown more real by the hour.
Here is what you need to know as a government shutdown looms.
Government shutdown 2024:Will a government shutdown affect Social Security checks? Here’s what you need to know
Current funding expires on Friday night, when Congress hopes to adjourn for the holidays. If a funding bill is not passed, then the government will see itself forced to furlough thousands of federal workers and reduce federal services.
Although the word shutdown sounds like a complete stop, that is not the complete picture. Federal agencies classify their workers either as “essential” or “nonessential.”
Workers identified as essential continue to work, but might not be paid right away. On the other hand, nonessential workers are furloughed and are not allowed to work or to be paid until the government reopens, according to a breakdown compiled by Reuters.
About 800,000 federal employees went without pay for 35 days during the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown in 2018 and 2019.
Federal workers around the U.S. would be impacted, many of them furloughed, in a government shutdown. Here’s how a government shutdown would impact:
Contributing: Reuters; Jeremy Yurow
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
