When Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, announced that he would vote with Republicans to clear the way for passage of a stopgap spending bill, he argued that a government shutdown would further empower President Trump and Elon Musk to defund government programs and shrink federal agencies.
“Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise that they would ever be rehired,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday.
But many Democrats, who were stunned and enraged by Mr. Schumer’s stance, argued that it was in fact the spending extension that would clear the way for Mr. Trump’s executive orders and Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to continue to reshape the government, running roughshod over Congress in the process.
Behind the political divide over how best to push back against Mr. Trump was a practical question: Does the White House have more power or less when the government shuts down?
It’s a complicated subject. Here’s what to know:
What happens in a government shutdown?
When the government shuts down, agencies continue essential work, but federal employees and contractors are not paid. Many employees are furloughed until Congress acts to extend new funding.
Federal agencies typically make contingency plans that lay out who should keep working and what programs need to operate during a shutdown. But spending experts said the decisions about what is deemed “necessary” or “essential” ultimately rest with the White House Office of Management and Budget, currently run by Russell T. Vought.
During a shutdown in Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Vought worked to expand the number of federal employees required to work. But he has also made clear his desire to vastly shrink the federal government, culling its work force and trying to claw back congressionally approved funding for government agencies.
Laura Blessing, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, said that given he Trump administration’s approach to government, it is not clear what might happen under a shutdown.
What powers does a president have during a shutdown?
Shutdowns give the executive branch wide authority to decide how government should work while it lacks spending authority.
“When there is a government shutdown, the president has almost full flexibility to shut down discretionary spending that he does not consider to be essential,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have already moved unilaterally to shut off programs and in some cases whole agencies they dislike, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. But doing so can be a cumbersome and time-consuming process, as the Trump administration has learned from the array of lawsuits it has faced in recent weeks.
In a shutdown, the paradigm would shift toward shuttering every federal department, potentially easing the path for the president and his team to decide which programs to prioritize and which to leave languishing without money to operate.
David Super, a professor who researches administrative law at Georgetown University, said Mr. Trump and Mr. Vought might be able to “effectively dictate the sequence of restarting the government” to favor their agenda, leaving federal employees on prolonged furlough in agencies that they oppose.
What happens under the funding extension?
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who had been pushing for a shorter-term funding extension to leave time for Congress to agree on regular spending bills, said on Friday that Republicans’ bill “hands a blank check to Elon Musk and Donald Trump to decide how our constituents’ taxpayer dollars get spent — all while they cut funding working people count on each and every day.”
In regular spending bills, members of Congress give specific directions about how they want federal money to be spent for the year. But temporary extensions, like the one that passed on Friday, only continue current funding levels without including any cuts, increases or limitations on their use.
Many Democrats argued that would give the Trump administration more discretion over federal funds even as it has taken steps to stop the spending of money authorized by Congress.
But Ms. Riedl said that under a temporary extension, presidents were generally expected to stick to the funding levels allocated by Congress, except where they had been explicitly modified.
“The president can’t just eliminate the Department of Education or send all the employees of a certain department home,” Ms. Riedl said. “He still must carry out the program and maintain spending at the required rates.”
Still, the Trump administration has made clear that it does not consider itself bound by Congress’s spending dictates.
“Trump and Musk are going to continue acting illegally no matter what this funding bill says,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a video explaining his opposition. But by extending funding, he added, “Democrats risk putting a kind of bipartisan veneer of endorsement on their campaign to give our government to the billionaires and destroy the rule of law.”
