When Congress fails to pass annual appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year, or when a short-term stop gap continuing resolution expires, agencies are required by law to shut down. Only essential activities that involve “the safety of human life and the protection of property” may continue. This means that most employees must be furloughed unless they are specifically excepted from a shutdown. Some activities deemed necessary by the President for national security purposes (like law enforcement, border protection, air traffic control and military operations) would continue under a decades-old legal opinion.
Other activities that require advance appropriations, such as food safety inspections and Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, would also be affected. This could mean that patients would have to wait longer for cancer treatments at the National Institutes of Health, or that new projects that rely on federal funding, such as schools being rebuilt after natural disasters, might be delayed.
A government shutdown impacts local communities across the country. Cities with large numbers of federal workers—such as military communities and those that rely on government contracts—can feel a heavy blow. A prolonged shutdown can impact city services like trash collection, public works maintenance and social service programs. It can also lead to delays in federal grants that cities rely on for economic development and infrastructure improvement projects.
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