Shutdown? What shutdown? For DC, just another day at the office

Shutdown? What shutdown?

There was a time when shutting down the federal government seemed like a big deal. Thirty years ago, the firestorm over a 21-day shutdown revived Bill Clinton's presidency and grievously wounded Newt Gingrich's speakership.

But the partial shutdown that started at midnight on Jan. 31 created less buzz over the weekend than the early and almost-entirely-negative reviews of Netflix's "Melania," the first lady's entry into documentary filmmaking.

This even though parts of the Pentagon, the Health and Human Services Department and the Transportation Department – left without regular funding – were ordered to begin an "orderly shutdown" for a least a few days. Late on Jan. 30, the Senate passed five appropriations bills to fund them but the House can't begin to consider the measure until it reconvenes Feb. 2.

"We'll get this done by Tuesday, I'm convinced," House Speaker Mike Johnson said on "Fox News Sunday." He noted, "The president is leading this."

But passage there isn't guaranteed. Democratic leaders aren't on board; some Republican hard-liners are expressing opposition.

And left unsettled is more money for the Homeland Security Department. Those funds are caught in a fierce battle over Democratic proposals, now backed by some Republicans, to impose limits on the behavior of the ICE agents whose aggressive tactics in Minneapolis have left protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti dead.

Under the deal reached by the Trump administration and the Senate, negotiators would have another two weeks before a shutdown over that looms again.

What once seemed like a sign of a government in crisis is now viewed by many in Washington as just another day at the office. Shutdowns have lost their power to shock unless clear catastrophe ensues − say, disrupting air travel for millions of Americans − or records are broken.

That's not to say shutdowns are free, for federal workers or Americans generally.

Besides overwhelmed TSA lines at some airports, the last shutdown, in 2025, resulted in the furlough of about 670,000 government employees. Members of the armed forces were required to report for duty, but some military families turned to food banks to tide over their families.

A report by the Congressional Research Service released Jan. 29 estimated that the six-week shutdown cost the U.S. economy about $11 billion in lost spending and productivity.

The current shutdown has a long way to go before it challenges the record that one set last fall. It had been prompted by Democrats' demand to extend enhanced subsidies for those who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

An issue, by the way, that is still being debated.

Do you trust your government?

One reason shutdowns have often become a dog-bites-man story is that what once was seen as a shocking last resort has been relatively common.

In the half-century since the federal budget process was overhauled in 1976, there have now been 23 of them, hitting every administration except those of Presidents George W. Bush and Joe Biden.

Ronald Reagan had the most, at eight, but each for only a few days. Trump has scored the longest. The previous record of 35 days, set during his first term over funding for his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, has now been supplanted by the 43-day shutdown in his second term.

Another reason is that the federal government is now viewed by many as so routinely dysfunctional that budget stalemates are seen as just one more example of a broader breakdown.

In a Pew Research Center poll released in December, just 17% of Americans said they trusted the government in Washington to do what is right most or all of the time.

When that question was first asked by the National Election Study in 1958, an overwhelming 73% of Americans held that level of trust in their government.

Views of the government have gone up and down in the generations since then. They eroded during the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal, and then rebounded during rosy economic times in the mid-1980s and late 1990s. But a spike after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001 collapsed in the wake of the Iraq War and financial meltdown in 2008.

Today's reading, with only about 1 in 6 Americans expressing faith in government, is one of the lowest over the past seven decades.

When it's easier to sign your name

Washington has also set public expectations low that action will be taken on, well, just about anything.

The 119th Congress, which took office in January 2025, is on track to enact the fewest pieces of legislation of any in decades, according to statistics reported by GovTrack.us.

The bills Trump signed into law in 2025 included the sweeping tax-cut measure known as the One Big Beautiful Bill. But the president has imposed many of his most far-reaching policies not by passing laws but by signing a record 228 executive orders − to impose stringent tariffs, order mass deportations, shake up federal agencies and deploy the National Guard to the streets of U.S. cities.

For Congress, funding the government, one of its fundamental tasks, has proven problematic.

Another shutdown?

Yawn.