DAY 17: Is Congress making itself irrelevant?
- Agora
- Oct 17
- 3 min read
AGORA SHUTDOWN UPDATE
October 17, 2025
The Senate skipped town last night for a long weekend after it failed once again to re-open the government. The House, meantime, has been out of session since September.
With President Trump making decisions about who to pay and who to fire, Congress’ constitutional authority to write laws and appropriate money is looking more and more like a paper tiger. Even the annual defense spending bill, which passed through committee with bipartisan support earlier this year, got caught up in the shutdown politics as virtually all Democrats blocked it.
As the ramifications for federal workers, contractors, and the general public start to pile up, the nation’s top policymakers do not seem to be in a hurry to find a way out. Week four of the shutdown begins next week.
Below is a roundup of the latest shutdown news.
CONGRESS
The U.S. Senate left for its customary long weekend Thursday afternoon, following a brief three days in session despite the ongoing government shutdown. The House remained on an extended break from Capitol Hill, where neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed motivated to talk to each other despite mounting repercussions from the funding lapse.
Speaker Mike Johnson is working to assuage worries within his conference about his strategy of keeping the House indefinitely out of session until Senate Democrats vote to end the government shutdown.
Senate Democrats voted Thursday to block the annual, full-year Defense spending bill, despite the measure passing out of committee with strong bipartisan support earlier this year.
Senate Republicans will vote next week to pay some federal government employees, including active duty members of the military, as the shutdown drags into its fourth week.
WHITE HOUSE
FBI special agents are still being paid despite the ongoing government shutdown, President Donald Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel said during an Oval Office press conference Wednesday. “We got the people that we want paid — paid,” Trump said. “And we want the FBI paid and we want the military paid.”
President Donald Trump’s latest budget maneuver — paying military salaries out of unrelated research funding — has so openly flouted federal law as to make lawmakers’ appropriations authority, and Congress itself, practically irrelevant, critics argue.
FEDERAL AGENCIES
The anxiety level among federal contractors is starting to rise as the partial government shutdown enters its third week. With lawmakers still far apart in how to at least temporarily fund the government, some contractors are implementing “austerity measures” to help reduce the impact on their bottom line.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday that the food stamp program will run out of funds in two weeks because of the partial government shutdown, potentially leaving nearly 42 million people without monthly benefits. The Agriculture Department later in the day released an Oct. 10 letter to regional SNAP directors directing them to stop work on November benefits.
Carpools, side jobs and food banks: How feds working through the shutdown are navigating delayed pay
Employees working without pay are worried about piling bills and distractions in jobs with no room for error.
What does a shutdown mean for government contractors, employees, grantees and the general public? Click here for more information.
Questions? Comments? Email Agora.
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