Partisan gridlock is bringing the country closer to a potential government shutdown, a move that could create even more uncertainty nationwide, including for state budget writers in Massachusetts.
Congressional Republicans are “driving us over a cliff,” Gov. Maura Healey said Tuesday during a “Boston Public Radio” appearance.
“It’s terrible for our country. It’s a really sad commentary on where we’re at. You know, the Republicans control the White House, and both the House and the Senate, and look at how dysfunctional things are,” she said.
Congress has until midnight Tuesday to agree on a continuing resolution before the federal government enters into a shutdown. Any funding deal will require bipartisan support.
Democrats want the spending bill to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year, and to reverse some other health care cuts passed in July in the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Republicans want to maintain existing funding for seven weeks to avoid a shutdown, and instead address health care policy separately.
“The Democrats have a very clear, binary choice. They can choose to keep the government open, voting for a short-term, nonpartisan, clean continued resolution. Twenty-four pages long. Or they can vote to shut the government down,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
“They voted during the time they had the majority, 13 different times when Biden was in the White House, on short-term continuing resolutions,” the North Dakota Republican continued. “And so it begs the question of, what’s changed? What’s changed is President Trump is in the White House. That’s what this is about. This is politics. And there isn’t any substantive reason why there ought to be a government shutdown.”
Senators are expected to vote Tuesday evening on Republicans’ continuing resolution, which was passed by the House, and Democrats’ counter-proposal. Any measure needs 60 votes in the Senate to progress.
“We are not going to be held hostage for a trillion dollars in new spending on a continuing resolution. Nor are we going to be held hostage to allow illegals to get free health care in a continued resolution. These are things that they’re demanding as part of their so-called ‘negotiation.’ Ladies and gentlemen, there isn’t anything here to negotiate,” Thune said, calling the bill “a routine funding resolution.”
But “Democrats do not want a shutdown,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Tuesday. “It’s right now in the Republicans’ court. We said this to Trump yesterday.” After meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday, Schumer said that Trump “can avoid the shutdown if he gets the Republican leaders to go along with what we want,” according to Associated Press reporting.
“The American people are learning how bad this health care crisis is and they will put tremendous heat on Republicans to solve it,” the New York Democrat said Tuesday. “We believe that this is an issue worth fighting for. We hope the Republicans avoid the shutdown but if they do it, it’s because they didn’t even negotiate with us until the last minute.”
A White House memo published Monday said Democrats “jeopardize critical funding for veterans, seniors, law enforcement, and many others” as they “bring the nation to the brink of a government shutdown.”
The most recent shutdown occurred for 35 days from the end of 2018 through the beginning of 2019, under the first Trump administration. It was considered a partial shutdown, as Congress had already approved funding for certain agencies. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed or exempt during that period, but received backpay once the government reopened.
There are roughly 45,000 federal employees living in Massachusetts, Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz said at a mid-year economic roundtable Tuesday meant to discuss federal policy changes and the outlook for fiscal year 2026.
“I think contractors, that is, folks that are working for the federal government under contract who get displaced, have no such benefits,” Michael Goodman, professor of policy at UMass Dartmouth and co-editor of MassBenchmarks, told budget writers when asked about the potential impacts of a shutdown. “And so one question I don’t know the answer to would be, how exposed are Massachusetts workers who are working for the government [under] contract arrangement going to be?”
“I think history suggests that these things are relatively short and self-correcting with some obvious displacement. There can be real cash flow and other challenges that accrue to those institutions who might be waiting for federal payments or invoices or grant awards and that sort of thing,” Goodman continued. “So there may be aspects of the state government or of quasi-public institutions, or public universities or even private institutions, where those delays create a meaningful issue for them. But when I look across the wide range of risks and vulnerabilities, at least today, that’s not my biggest concern.”
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Doug Howgate called Tuesday “kind of a perfect day to talk about the uncertainty as it relates to federal policy.”
“One, we don’t know if we’re going to be in a government shutdown tomorrow. We probably will be. And then two, would any of us sit here and say, and ‘Surely this government shutdown will look like the last government shutdown?’ No, right? We don’t know,” Howgate said. “So that type of uncertainty from the federal policy level, I think, continues to impact the economy, continues to impact policymaking. But I think the point we want to make, is we want to make sure that it doesn’t lead to paralysis in what we do, because I think we do know more than we did before.”
Officials in the Office of the Comptroller and the Executive Office of Administration and Finance gave state agencies a Tuesday deadline to report potential contingency plans and payroll concerns should the federal government shut down. Gorzkowicz called the information being gathered “baseline information to understand the impacts of a federal shutdown.”
“So how many state employees do we have that are paid for by federal sources? And just trying to understand the different pockets of federal funds that could be interrupted through a government shutdown, and then trying to figure out how we manage from there,” Gorzkowicz said.
Asked if Democrats should be shutting down the government over health care issues, Healey maintained that “Democrats are not shutting down the government.”
“This is a failure by Donald Trump and Republican leadership,” Healey said. “What it does speak to, and what the Democrats are speaking out about, is the fact that, you know, not only have you gutted health care, and rural hospitals are going to close, community hospitals are going to close, people are losing access to Medicaid.”
Massachusetts Health Connector estimates that 337,000 people in Massachusetts will see increased health care costs in 2026 if the credits are not extended, per the governor’s office. Healey referred Tuesday to state estimates that more than 300,000 people will lose health care coverage between MassHealth and Health Connector under the One Big Beautiful Bill.
“I think that it is absolutely important to many Americans that they have health care coverage. We’ve seen health care coverage expand across the United States, and you know, to think that it’s going to be taken away — I think that’s what the Democrats are doing, is pointing out what is a real, real problem for a lot of people around this country if they don’t make a change,” Healey said.
When asked about her confidence that Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are “strong enough leaders” for this situation, Healey said, “I think there are a lot of strong leaders out there. I don’t think it’s on the two of them alone. You know, I don’t always think that leader Schumer is the best messenger.”
“That said, I know there are a lot of people out there pressing and making the case, and they need to,” Healey added.
