Latest on the Government Shutdown

Posted by Ryan Fitzgerald on October 15, 2025

The government has been shut down for the past 14 days, and a resolution to the political impasse looks distant. While the Senate returned on Tuesday, the House is out of session until next week – signaling House leaders’ tacit acknowledgement that the Senate is in control of ending the shutdown. The current expectation is that the shutdown is unlikely to end until later this month, or more likely after November 1, when the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act begins. Premiums for many lower-income individuals are expected to increase, as the health care tax credits will expire at the end of the year (detailed below).

How did we get here?

In March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) faced withering criticism from his party when he broke with most Senate Democrats and voted to keep the government funded. In response, as the September 30 government funding deadline approached, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-8) resolved to take a different tactic and use the little leverage Democrats have to extract concessions from Republicans and the administration.

State of negotiations

In advance of the deadline, the House passed a ‘clean’ continuing resolution (CR), which would continue to fund the government at FY2025 levels for an additional 7 weeks to allow additional appropriations bill negotiations to occur. That legislation must pass the 60-vote threshold to overcome the Senate filibuster, and Senate Democrats have consistently been voting it down, stipulating that Republicans must meet several key demands to get Democratic support. While three Democrats initially defected and voted with the GOP to pass the House CR, there have been no further defections, signaling the Democratic side is determined to extract some concessions from their Republican colleagues and the administration.

Democrats have three key demands for coming to a deal on the shutdown: 1) extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits that are scheduled to expire at the end of this year; 2) roll back the cuts to Medicaid passed in this year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1); and 3) end the usage of unilateral rescissions, particularly ‘pocket rescissions’, of congressionally approved funding. Securing a guarantee to extend the ACA tax credit is seen as the most important of the three for Democrats. The rollback of cuts to specific Medicaid components and work requirements that were passed in H.R. 1 comes with a very large price tag and is seen as a non-starter for Republicans in Congress. Democrats want to negotiate on the specifics of an ACA bill that would get a vote, as well as a guarantee it would clear both chambers. Republicans say they cannot and will not make such a promise (though they have informally discussed giving Democrats a commitment on a vote to extend the tax credits) and demand that Democrats first vote to reopen the government, and then negotiations can begin.

For its part, the administration is determined to ‘win’ the shutdown, rerouting money to fund the most politically sensitive government programs, while simultaneously using the shutdown as justification for implementing reductions in force (RIFs) at the various agencies it has been critical of since taking office.

The best example of the administration’s shutdown strategy is its handling of wage payments for members of the U.S. military. Over a million troops were slated to go unpaid on October 15, but a bipartisan chorus prompted President Trump to order the Pentagon to find a way to pay its troops. It responded by redirecting $8 billion in R&D funding towards that effort; the administration found a similar method to pay federal law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. By using unorthodox budgetary tactics to fund a bipartisan priority, the administration has removed what had been one of the most significant forces pushing Democrats and Republicans to the negotiating table.

Impacts of the ongoing shutdown

The shutdown has generated numerous adverse effects, including multiple with direct implications for credit unions.

On Friday, the administration announced a mass layoff of over 4,000 federal employees across federal agencies, including more than 1,400 employees at the Treasury Department. Most significantly for credit unions, all employees tasked with administering the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) program were fired — effectively shuttering the program. Given the longstanding, bipartisan support for the CDFI program, GoWest is actively working with our congressional delegation and administration contacts to strategize and prepare a robust response to these firings.

Additionally, the administration has publicly questioned whether it is required to provide back pay to non-essential federal employees who are currently furloughed, in addition to the essential employees who are working without pay (which has been standard practice in previous shutdowns). These statements have injected significant uncertainty into whether furloughed employees will receive back pay and affected the standard loan behavior that occurs between financial institutions and furloughed federal employees. The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 (GEFTA), passed during the previous Trump administration, is supposed to guarantee back pay for federal employees during this type of shutdown, but the White House and Office of Management and Budget are challenging whether full protections of the law extend to non-essential workers.

What credit unions are doing for those affected by the shutdown

GoWest and its member credit unions are actively communicating how credit unions are providing assistance to their members during the shutdown. We’ve highlighted several examples in our On The Go newsletter of how GoWest member credit unions are showing up for impacted members through special loan programs to payment relief options, and proactive outreach.

Credit unions are also taking the message to mainstream media. Blue Federal Credit Union and Westerra Credit Union spoke with Bankrate about how credit unions are assisting members affected by the shutdown. Read the article here.  Ent and Air Academy Credit Unions joined Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO-5) at a roundtable for press and members of the community in Colorado Springs to discuss programs for impacted federal employees and the military. GoWest issued a press release to further amplify this message and ensure visibility across news and AI search platforms: Credit Unions Offer Assistance During Government Shutdown.  We greatly appreciate the work our member credit unions are doing, and we urge you to share with the GoWest team what programs you have in place to aid federal employees and members/families of the military, which is further outlined below.

Resources for GoWest members

GoWest is also providing resources to our member credit unions during the shutdown. Please visit our Government Shutdown Resource Center for talking points, FAQs, and compliance resources your team may need as Congress works toward a resolution.

If you have a specific program for either the U.S. military or federal employees that has been impacted due to the shutdown, please let our team know and share the program (including a link to the website) with Ryan ([email protected]) and/or Evan ([email protected]).

Posted in Advocacy on the Move, Federal Advocacy.