America's Talking - Federal services to slowly recover following end of government shutdown

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

(The Center Square) – With the longest government shutdown in history finally over, federal agencies are slowly bringing affected services back online and hoping to resume normal operations by the end of next week. Tens of millions of low-income Americans on food stamps should receive November benefits within 24 hours, Politico reported. Some of the most disruptive consequences of the 43-day shutdown, however, may take longer to remedy. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxRead more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9a4a4017-2de1-4735-a433-2b09d70ca5d0.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. After 43 days, enough Democratic U.S. senators join Republicans to vote to end the federal government shutdown. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's congressional reporter, Terez Boudreau. Tres, it was a long 43 days for government workers, for air travelers, for those who receive SNAP benefits, and many more. Tell us how this shutdown finally came to an end. It came to an end with only Democrats getting nominal concessions, I would say, which I think everybody kind of expected, because that's generally how shutdowns work. The party that refuses to give, in the Senate, refuses to give enough votes for a funding bill to go through, causing a shutdown. Historically, they've never really gotten their demands. The government has just shut down, and a lot of people have experienced pain, and then it reopens, and there's either nothing that changed or nominal. concessions. So the concessions, the deal that happened, so it was Tuesday night, and the Republican appropriators came back. And so they came back with a new CR, a new funding stopgap, because the old one,

you know, the government shutdown lasted for six weeks, you know, at that point. And so the old one, it just, it wouldn't give them enough time to finish the regular appropriations process. So it slapped a new date on it said, okay, we have the CR and it'll keep government funding on cruise control after we pass it until January 30th. And then we're also going to throw in the minibus that the chamber already passed. And so that's basically three out of the 12 full year funding bills, appropriations bills. So that funds like military and veterans affairs, FDA, Department of agriculture, which includes the SNAP program, and the legislative branch. So they say, look, we have something that will open up the government and keep it open to give us more time to finish the

remaining nine appropriations bills. And to get the, to get eight Democratic senators on board, those were those they needed because one Republican Rand Paul voted no. They said, we will promise you a vote, not guarantee an outcome, it will promise you a vote. on the subsidies, the enhanced Obamcare premium tax credits that were going to expire, or that are going to expire most likely in December. And they said we will reverse the mass layoffs that the Trump administration did during the shutdown, which were legally dubious anyway. And that was their offer. And so eight Democratic senators took it. Well, I should say eight senators in the Democratic caucus. Five joined the three who had already been at that point

voting with Republicans to end the shutdown. And then they passed it over to the House. And the House passed it and six Democrats helped pass it in the House as well. Although since there's no filibuster in the House, they wouldn't have needed to. Republicans could have just passed on their own. But yes, so that happened Wednesday. And the government reopened. and here we are. Federal officials do say it will take some time to get things up and running, of course, air travel. For those who aren't government workers, the government workers who were furloughed were probably the most impacted by them by this shutdown, but you also have the snap recipients, etc. How quickly are they, I mean, it's not going to like, you're not going to

snap your fingers and everything is going to reopen overnight. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So transportation secretary of Sean Duffy was saying that the speed at which flights and just transportation in general can get back to normal is dependent on when federal workers return. So the majority of federal workers, hundreds of thousands during the shutdown were furloughed without pay. So that's obviously not great. But that means that since they were furloughed, they could take up odd jobs. But those who were considered essential, so air traffic controllers, capital police, TSA agents, border patrol, et cetera, they still had to work, but they weren't receiving pay. So they had to show up to a job and then spend their whole day of a job and then receive a $0 pay stub. So it was really causing issues in airspace in particular because air traffic controllers missed.

two entire, two full paychecks. So a lot of them were calling out sick, either from fatigue or also so that they could pick up some odd job on the side and make sure that, you know, their family doesn't get evicted. And Senator Deffer was talking about this. So they did some, the federal aviation administration did some, um, uh, forced flight reductions. I said, look, this is, we don't, there's too much risk right now. So you need to cut back on. flights, which are on airlines and airports. And so there have been mass delays and cancellations because of that, and before the order anyway, just again, because people call not sick.

So Duffy said that we're going to be looking at the data, and as soon as the data says that it is safe to allow flights to return to full capacity, or to full volume, then they will do so. So right now, there's a 6% reduction in flight volume. But he was saying as soon as air traffic controllers, you know, come in, like all of them return and things get up and running again, that things should be back to normal. So he's hoping that that will be by the end of next week. But again, really just contingent on how fast people come back to their jobs. And it's November 14th when we're recording this, Terrez. as you said earlier, this continuing resolution that was passed ends on January 30th.

So are we just setting ourselves up to do this whole thing all over again? I certainly hope not. I mean, it's, so it's possible now because the appropriations, three appropriations bills and that minibus were also passed with the CR, that means that if the government shuts down again, if they don't finish the remaining nine appropriations bills or they have a CR or a continuing resolution that's again filibustered, it would be a partial government shutdown because the agencies dealing with the Veterans Affairs, the military construction, rural development, FDA, agriculture, and legislative branch, those would be unaffected.

So that means that if the government shuts down again, for instance, people would still, unlike in this shutdown, when Snap was jeopardized and people weren't getting food stamps, people will in the next one because that's been fully funded for the year. There's also a lot of federal workers, including TSA agents on air traffic controllers, I believe, in who are covered under those. bills, essentially. So we also wouldn't be seeing that happen. So it would be, there would probably be less pain in that shutdown, I guess, I would say. But clearly it's the no shutdown is good. And we're hoping that that doesn't happen, that lawmakers actually come together and finish the remaining government funding bills and finally just get all of us, all of us behind us. Therese, thank you for explaining this for our listeners and for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.