Will the Government Shut Down in December?

Not yet, and not unless Congress lets it happen. The government is funded through Friday, December 11, under the stopgap law passed in September, so there is no shutdown today and none is scheduled. A shutdown begins only if the lame-duck Congress that returns to Washington on Monday, November 9 passes nothing by that date, no full-year spending bills and no new stopgap. In that case, the Congressional Research Service says, "a funding gap beginning on December 12, 2026, that may result in a shutdown of affected government activities."

The plain reality is how far the record and the calendar have drifted apart. By the book, the twelve spending bills for the 2027 fiscal year were Congress's work for October 1. In reality, not one of them is law, the Senate Appropriations Committee has not reported a single one, and the whole federal government is running on what amounts to a 72-day loan of time: the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, signed on September 2, keeps every agency spending at last year's pace, an estimated $1.701 trillion a year, until December 11. Congress chose that date on purpose, five and a half weeks after the November 3 midterms, so the voters would speak first and the appropriators would finish later. That is why the question is being asked now, in the days before the session that must answer it even begins.

What the two sides claim shows a fight about money, not about the deadline itself. The Trump administration is asking for a record $1.5 trillion defence budget, and, as our report on the Democrats' spending plans sets out, Democrats are vowing to hold defence below $1 trillion once they take control, tying any increase to more domestic money. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins and Vice Chair Patty Murray have announced no agreement on the total, and without that number the Senate has no bills to move. Neither party is claiming to want a shutdown: when the stopgap itself passed the House in September, it passed 370 to 48, a margin that shows how little appetite either side had for one in campaign season, and The Hill reported at the time that another stopgap pushing the deadline into the new year was the likely outcome, especially if Democrats retook a chamber. They retook both.

"Congress must enact regular appropriations bills for FY2027 or an additional CR prior to the expiration of this CR to avoid a funding gap beginning on December 12, 2026."

That is the Congressional Research Service, and the common-sense principle inside it is plain: a stopgap does not settle an argument, it only rents time, and a deadline Congress sets for itself binds only on the day the money actually stops. The consequence, if the rent runs out, is a partial shutdown from December 12, not a full one: only the agencies covered by the twelve unfinished bills lose their funding, while the same December 11 date also carries the federal flood insurance programme and surface transportation authority, which expire with it. And the strangest part of the consequence is who decides. The Democratic Congress elected on November 3 does not sit until January 3, so the votes that decide December belong to the outgoing Republican Congress, including members the voters have just removed. If that Congress would rather wait, the shutdown it leaves behind becomes the first problem the new Congress inherits. Will a Congress in its final weeks finish the budget it owed the country in October, or hand over a shutdown as its parting gift?

The details that decide it are three doors, and only three. Congress can pass an omnibus or a series of smaller packages carrying most or all of the twelve bills, which needs a total-spending deal within weeks and floor time in both chambers. It can pass another stopgap into January or March 2027 and hand the whole job to the new Congress, which is the path of least resistance now that Democrats have won, because an incoming majority has every reason to wait for its own gavels. Or it can do both at once, full-year bills where the two sides are close and a stopgap for the rest, the same hybrid that ended the 2025 shutdown fight when a law carried three full-year bills alongside a stopgap. The House has passed three of the twelve bills; everything else needs 60 votes in the Senate, where Republicans would need at least seven Democrats, and then the president's signature, or two-thirds of both chambers to override a veto. Around the main deadline sit smaller ones the same session must also carry: the farm bill expired on September 30, a surveillance authority has been lapsed since June, and health extenders run into a second cliff on December 31, but December 11 is the only hard deadline of the session. Samara Brown, a senior policy advisor at the Center for Renewing America, put the whole answer in one sentence on the Kim Monson Show: "We have a continuing resolution or a CR, as we call it here in D.C., to December 11th of this year. And after that, the government will shut down."