Congress Averts Government Shutdown By Agreeing To 52 Smaller, More Manageable Ones

WASHINGTON, DC — Ending an 11-day standoff that threatened to close the federal government indefinitely, House and Senate leaders announced a bipartisan deal Saturday under which the government will instead shut down every Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. through September 2027. Lawmakers called it the first funding agreement in a decade that both parties could live with, because neither party will have to be present for any of it.

The measure, formally titled the Continuing Partial Appropriations and Scheduled Lapse Act, swaps one large, unpredictable crisis for what its sponsors describe as "a recurring, calendared, family-friendly crisis." Under its terms, national parks will close at lunchtime each Friday, passport offices will stop answering the phone at 12:55, and air traffic controllers will be asked to "land whatever is up there and then sort of wind down."

"For years Americans told us shutdowns were chaotic and impossible to plan around," said Rep. Dale Hennick (R-KS), who co-wrote the bill on the back of a lunch menu. "Now you can put it in your Google Calendar. Set it to repeat. That's what governing looks like."

Sen. Marisol Treadway (D-OR) agreed, calling the deal "a painful compromise." Democrats had initially pushed for the weekly shutdown to fall on Mondays. "We gave up a lot," Treadway said. "But we got a guarantee that no shutdown will ever again overlap with a three-day weekend, and that's a win for every senator who owns a lake house."

Federal workers, who will be furloughed for four hours each week and paid retroactively at an unspecified future date, said they were still trying to understand the schedule. "My supervisor says I'm essential from 9 to 1 and nonessential from 1 to 5," said Kendra Owusu, a Department of Agriculture analyst in Beltsville, Md. "I've asked which one I am at lunch. Nobody will say."

A Congressional Budget Office analysis released Saturday morning found the plan would cost roughly 30 percent more than a single long shutdown, mostly in overtime for the staff who turn the lights off and on again. The CBO also warned that the Friday closures would leave just enough of each week open for Congress to begin negotiating the following year's deal, which aides expect to collapse in August.

Polling suggests voters approve. A survey commissioned by the House Rules Committee and conducted entirely in the House cafeteria found that 64 percent of respondents preferred the weekly shutdown to the old kind, and 81 percent said they had never noticed the old kind.

At press time, leaders of both parties had reportedly left the Capitol at 12:58 p.m. to "beat the shutdown traffic," then agreed by text to push next week's closure to Thursday so members could catch earlier flights home.