The Shutdown: What women need to know

What women need to know about funding, work, kids, healthcare and everything else we need to keep us and our families safe and functioning during the shutdown that starts tonight.

Update 7:40pm ET Sept. 30 from AP: Senate Democrats have voted down a Republican bill to keep funding the government, putting it on a near certain path to a shutdown after midnight Wednesday for the first time in almost seven years. After the vote, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo saying that “affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”

A federal shutdown occurs when the U.S. Congress fails to pass legislation to fund government agencies and operations. This results in the closure or suspension of all ‘non-essential’ government functions until a new budget or a temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, is enacted.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress. The Senate composition is key on the shutdown issue: 60 votes are required to pass a spending bill, and there are 53 Republican senators, leaving them 7 votes shy of the votes needed to pass a spending bill.

Particularly because of the public pushback outnumbered and hands-tied Democrats took over not aggressively fighting the budget bill, Democrats are so far standing firm and refusing to vote for a spending bill unless Republicans mitigate the damage to healthcare inflicted particularly by the budget bill. (“OBBBA”)

The deadline is midnight tonight, September 30, and there’s no indication anyone is changing their minds. If you look at news coming out of DC, it’s about everything except the shutdown. Republicans—already looking at midterm backlash and possibly losing their majority in the House—have decided to stand firm, since history hasn’t been kind to the party that forces a shutdown. Rs are already doing what they do very well—messaging, in this case threats. Dems feel healthcare is enough of an issue to take the risk, although Americans will have to understand enough about the coming cuts to understand the Dem position, since their wallets haven’t yet been affected by anything but predictions. Most cuts don’t hit until early 2026 or later.

So here we are—and here’s what it may mean to us.

When … and how long?

The deadline is tonight, Sept 30, at midnight. At 00:01 Wednesday, unless a continuing resolution is passed, the shutdown starts. No one’s talking, so the odds are 99.99% that will happen. Before 1980, funding gaps did not always result in a full shutdown, but since then, shutdowns have varied significantly in duration. The longest shutdown occured December 2018 to January 2019 during the first Trump administration, and lasted 35 days. That one was over border wall funding.

Why?

• Here’s a good synopsis from the BBC. Bottom line: it’s mostly about healthcare.

  • By 2023, one out of four Americans were covered by Medicaid, including four out of ten pregnant women.¹ On top of the unwinding of pandemic-era protections that removed 25 million Americans from Medicaid, the budget bill (“OBBBA”) cuts another 12 million people off Medicaid. Another 44 million covered by the ACA (“Obamacare”) will either lose coverage or see an average increase of 18% in coverage costs—essentially a quiet repeal of the ACA equal in impact to the failed 2017 repeal effort.² That’s a total of 28% of the <65 population who will either lose health coverage or see a huge increase in cost.

    • Context: The final CBO analysis of this year’s budget bill was that the 10% of poorest Americans will lose roughly $1,200 a year as they experience restrictions on government programs like Medicaid and food assistance, while the richest 10% of Americans will see their income increase by $13,600 from tax cuts.

      • It’s easy to assume those on Medicaid are moochers who aren’t working and could be. Except as taxpayers we’re paying for Medicaid for employees of major national employers like Walmart and McDonalds, who focus on part-time work ineligible for health insurance, or have high employee insurance costs, or pay so poorly employees qualify as indigent. As tax payers, we’re picking up the tab Walmart and McDonalds and huge employers won’t.

  • The downstream havoc of this is immense on health access, state budgets, and the broader economy. The budget bill already pulled out $187B in support for rural hospitals, even with one in three US counties already without obstetrical services. While $50B was put back in via a “rural hospital transformation” bill, that still leaves a $137B hole. Medicaid covers a larger share of rural Americans than urban; this will hit rural hospitals ever harder. Many of those will be farmers—reliably Republican voters—already devastated by soybean tariffs this year.

• Another factor in the mix is the administration’s increasing requests for recissions—clawing back funds already appropriated by Congress. Democrats, and now some Republicans, view this as rendering moot whatever Congress does pass, and an increasing barrier to bipartisan agreement.

What does it mean for women?

A federal government shutdown has wide-reaching consequences, but its impact on women is disproprotionately severe, whether in the federal workforce or the military, caregivers, moms, or those who are lower-income or reliant on public services. Many women manage household finances. Missed paychecks created stress, delayed bill payments, and strained family budgets and when kids are impacted—as in potential closure of childcare programs—the parent who may have to stay home from work to care for children is often the mother, disrupting critical second incomes critical to a huge percentage of young families.

• Federal workers and active-duty military families: Perhaps the biggest impacts will be felt by federal workers and active-duty military service members who will not receive a paycheck during a government shutdown. (They get complete back-pay when the shutdown ends.) The White House is also threatening mass layoffs (a reduction in force, or RIF) of federal employees, in addition to furlough notices. A shutdown would happen toward the end of a pay period, so the first full paycheck missed for federal employees would be Oct. 24, while for the military it would be Oct. 15. Federal employees and military members will get back pay once the shutdown is over.

  • Congress and the president will continue to be paid during a shutdown. No comment.

• Women in government jobs: Women make up a large share of the federal workforce, particularly in agencies like Kennedy’s HHS and the Social Security Administration. During the 2018–2019 shutdown, thousands of women were furloughed or forced to work without pay.

• Healthcare coverage: If the shutdown coincides with lapses in funding for Medicaid or Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, millions of women could lose access to affordable health coverage. This is especially critical for women of color and those without employer-sponsored insurance. Past shutdowns have slowed or halted services at federally funded clinics, including those offering reproductive healthcare, already overburdened by Planned Parenthood funding decreases. Here’s an article from Ms. Magazine that covers health impacts in more detail.

• Travel: What travelers need to know about a government shutdown, starting with longer TSA lines. Like air traffic controllers, TSA will be required to work without pay as ‘essential employees’—not the type of pressure we’d want on those who keep air travel safe. Air traffic controllers have been understaffed for year, a situation made much worse by indiscriminate DOGE firings. If the shutdown goes on for any length of time, safety is bound to suffer from both TSA and air traffic controller overwork, stress, and worsening morale. In 2019, the shutdown led to ‘sick-outs’ among controllers angry about missing paychecks; that eventually led to the end of the shutdown. Also anticipate slowdowns in getting or renewing passport.

• Research and Safety Monitoring: Agencies like the FDA and NIH scale back operations, delaying clinical trials and safety reviews that disproportionately affect women’s health treatments.

• National parks, federal museums, zoo: DOGE cut back about a quarter of national park staff, resulting in national parks already cutting back hours and services. Last week 35 former national parks superintendents sent a letter requesting closure of national parks if there’s a shutdown to avoid endangering visitors and park lands. Check on specific federally funded sites like the Smithsonian and the National Zoo, which initially were open during the shutdown of the first Trump administration, but then closed to the public after more than a week. Bottom line: if you’re planning a vacation trip, check ahead on any shutdown-related issues.

• Food assistance and childcare closures: The US already has abysmal child hunger rates, with one out of five children experiencing food insecurity in the richest nation in the world. If the shutdown runs for a while and funding runs out for SNAP and WIC, hunger will absolutely increase, impact kids’ learning and the health of pregant women and their infants. WIC funding for new applicants runs out October 1. Early education programs like Head Start may face temporary closures, affecting working mothers who rely on them for childcare. Women are overrepresented in low-wage jobs and more likely to rely on public benefits. Shutdowns disrupt access to housing assistance, food aid, and healthcare, compounding economic vulnerability.

• Safety inspections—food, power plants, water treatment plants—will likely be disrupted due to furloughs.

See other state-specific shutdown impacts in this article.

What won’t be affected

• US Mail: USPS is primarily self-funded and doesn’t depend on the appropriations process to continue running as usual.

• Social Security: Payments will still be made on schedule. Medicare benefits also continue uninterrupted; the federal government has enough money for Medicaid to fund the first quarter of the next fiscal year. 18% of the US is >65, but Boomers control 52% of US wealth. Life will continue largely unaltered, buffered from what the other 82% of the population is experiencing. #bubblealert

• National Weather Service: Ahead of past possible shutdowns, the National Weather Service has said it would continue to provide routine forecasts, as well as extreme weather watch and warning information.

• FEMA: Federal policy excludes most FEMA from furloughs during government shutdowns because they are designated “emergency employees. However, if FEMA funding runs out, long-delayed help after Hurricane Helene a year ago—like that illegally withheld by the Trump administration—will be further delayed.

• Veteran services: Vets would still be provided medical care and pension benefits. But some services within the Department of Veterans Affairs, such as career counseling, would not be provided.

1. Looking at the numbers on Medicaid in isolation, it’s easy to say “let’s cut Medicaid.” However, these are people who are barely holding their own already. Take a look at this Federal Reserve data on US wealth, particularly what’s happened in the last three decades to the top 50% of the population compared to the bottom 50%. If you’re in the top 50%, you’re probably holding your own; they aren’t. The often-unseen people who take care of us every day—get our food to us from farms far away, keep products and transpotation moving, take care of our homes, gardens and aging parents? They definitely are not doing well, and those are the same people who are going to be nailed by Medicaid and ACA cuts, even though extensive research has shown that cutting Medicaid coverage leads to worse health and increased premature mortality, increasing taxpayer costs in the long term. Just on pregnancy and birth alone—something we’re trying to increase—we’re looking at disasters. Doctors don’t provide unpaid prenatal care, and four of ten pregnancies were covered by Medicaid prior to the cuts. Prenatal care is what lowers prematurity, and when women don’t get prenatal care, prematurity costs can easily exceed $100K/baby—a cost that eventually gets passed on to us as taxpayers. And that doesn’t include often-lifetime support for prematurity-associated disabilities. We’re cancelling illness prevention and taxing the lower 50% in favor of a tax cut for the upper 50%.

2. The enhanced ACA tax credits enacted during the pandemic and extended through 2025 are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. In addition to individuals who can’t afford health insurance elsewhere, many small employers now default to ACA plans. 88% of US employers have <50 employees. Across the nation, ACA costs are expected to increase by an average of 18%. Another 12 million people will lose coverage, and costs will increase substantially for the rest, likely decreasing enrollees by a third—a goal for Republicans since their 2017 failed ACA repeal attempt. In other words, they’re accomplishing quietly what they couldn’t accomplish openly in 2017: a repeal of the ACA.