On October 1, 2025, the U.S. government shut down after Congress deadlocked over passing a bill to keep funding government services. As a result, hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed, while many others are working without pay. Millions who rely on public services like food assistance and housing aid are left in uncertainty. This isn’t a natural disaster. It’s an artificial crisis, manufactured by political standstill in the wealthiest country in human history.
Politicians have already turned this shutdown into a blame game: Democrats blaming Republicans, Republicans blaming Democrats.
Democrats say that they are drawing the line to fight for healthcare for working class people. During the COVID crisis Democrats pushed for enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (often called Obamacare), which doubled the amount of people enrolled in the program and decreased the costs substantially. If the subsidies lapse at the end of October, anyone who receives them will have their premiums double. The fact that these subsidies were even needed in the first place suggests how unaffordable the so-called Affordable Care Act was for many people. Congress (at that time controlled by Democrats) conveniently set these subsidies to expire right before this current budget showdown to use as leverage in negotiations, particularly given that many people in Republican states depend on the Affordable Care Act. While the subsidies certainly benefit millions of working people, there are still an estimated 24 million people who have no health insurance at all. The Democratic Party is not interested in truly fighting for healthcare. To do so would mean taking on the insurance and pharmaceutical industries that they are beholden to. They just want to use our health as a political bargaining chip.
Republicans say that the shutdown is because Democrats want to give millions of dollars to “illegal aliens.” This is a total lie. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for government sponsored healthcare, whether through the Affordable Care Act or anything else. They are manipulating and exaggerating the fact that a very small amount of “lawfully present immigrants” who are refugees in the United States might be eligible for healthcare coverage in some states. Regardless of all this dishonest minutia, there is an even bigger lie – that undocumented immigrants are somehow responsible for the declining living conditions of working people who happen to have citizenship.
Despite the partisan blame game, for working-class people none of this is a game. The costs will be immediate and concrete, especially in the agencies people rely on for health and safety. At the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 40% of the staff is on unpaid leave. The CDC and the National Institutes of Health are seeing work shutdowns and force reductions, derailing research, oversight, and public health programs. At the Department of Education, budget cuts, thousands of layoffs and now these furloughs are likely killing programs that specifically serve students with special needs and minorities. And an estimated 4,000 federal workers have lost their jobs because of the shutdown, with many more waiting with fear and uncertainty. J.D. Vance made the administration’s agenda clear, saying that, “…The longer this [government shutdown] goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration claims to have paused $11 billion in previously allocated funds for major infrastructure projects in Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, New York and Boston, all majority Democratic cities. Trump himself called the shutdown an ‘unprecedented opportunity.’ Make no mistake, this is the behavior of a petty tyrant!
The cuts are being implemented by Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is one of the key authors of the Project 2025 document which laid out a vision for a far-right transformation of society, including the dismantling of social programs within the federal government as well as many other reactionary policies.
While the flow of resources into much needed programs gets cut off, there is one thing that never stops: the flow of money to the rich. Debt payments continue. Military spending goes on. When it comes to banks and defense contractors, there is no shutdown. It’s only the livelihoods of workers and the poor that can be put on hold. The government can’t guarantee that workers will be paid on time, or that they will get their pay at all, but it guarantees profits for the rich without interruption. This crisis reveals the truth of our government. It is not a neutral institution trying to balance the interest of both sides of the aisle. It is an instrument of the capitalist class, and shutdowns show the limits of the system they manage.
This is why calling the shutdown a political stalemate misses the point. Bipartisanship will not resolve this, because the issue is not about two parties that can’t get along. Both Democrats and Republicans ultimately serve the same system, and they turn vital services into bargaining chips in their disputes.
Workers should not have to live with the constant threat that their wages, their food assistance, or their children’s care depend on the outcome of budget fights. In a society with so much wealth, the problem isn’t scarcity, it’s control. Shutdowns remind us that as long as politics remains in the hands of the rich, the working majority will always be left holding the bill.
