Why the US government is shutting down and what should we do as investors

What started out as a simple stopgap measure to avert a shutdown for a few months became a magnet for more than $100 billion in emergency disaster and farm aid, plus a host of unrelated policy measures.

Congressional leaders on Tuesday unveiled legislation that would keep government funding flowing through the middle of March and provide nearly $100 billion in aid for communities ravaged by hurricanes and other disasters.
Negotiators in both parties had been toiling to reach a deal ahead of a Friday deadline to avert a shutdown. The sprawling bill, more than 1,500 pages, includes $10 billion in direct economic assistance for farmers and another $21 billion in disaster relief for farmers. It would keep government funding at current levels, and would punt another funding fight until March 14, when the Republican-controlled Congress will have to come to another spending agreement.

Negotiators in both parties had been toiling to reach a deal ahead of a Friday deadline to avert a shutdown. The sprawling bill, more than 1,500 pages, includes $10 billion in direct economic assistance for farmers and another $21 billion in disaster relief for farmers. It would keep government funding at current levels, and would punt another funding fight until March 14, when the Republican-controlled Congress will have to come to another spending agreement.
It is also stuffed with an array of unrelated policy measures on health, energy, digital privacy and other matters that lawmakers quietly agreed to slip in as part of a final round of haggling in the last days of the Congress, powered by billions in federal money and a collective desire to clear the legislative decks before the new year.
The result was that even before leaders unveiled the legislation on Tuesday, it appeared that Speaker Mike Johnson could face mass defections from his members. A number of House Republicans, including some mainstream conservatives, said that they would not support the deal because it crammed too many policies into one massive bill.

Congress just got caught trying to put over $100 billion on our credit card. On what, you ask? A law to put politicians above the law, fund censorship programs, fund more vaccine mandates and gain-of-function-type research, hand out $3 million to inspect molasses inspectors, $15 million to make recycling more accessible, and $100 million to migrant farmworkers. The bill would also keep Kamala Harris’s electric bus program and ban sexy memes. It’s even woke too! It would change the word “homeless” to “an individual experiencing homelessness.” Plus, Congress wants to give itself a raise to keep up with the cost of living. Now why has the cost of living gone up? Because of Congress!

Every year our politicians tell us the spending will stop and then every year, they do it again. Now, Republicans just scrapped the spending bill and are going to pull an all-nighter. They have until Friday midnight to vote on a new bill or the government shuts down for Christmas. They’ve had all year to get this done and they waited until the last second, tried to pull a fast one, got caught, and then they promised they won’t do it again. It’s the same thing every time. They have no respect for you – or your money.

Their (Trump and Vance) opposition adds significant weight to Musk's sustained effort throughout the day to tank the 1,547-page bill, which he says is laden with wasteful pork-barrel spending.
If there is no legislation passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president to fund the government after Friday night, the federal government would start enacting a partial shutdown that could include employee furloughs.
Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead an advisory group aimed at slashing purported government waste, did not appear concerned with the prospect of a government shutdown one week before Christmas.
"'Shutting down' the government (which doesn't actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill," Musk wrote in one of dozens of X posts railing against the CR.
In another post, Musk asserted that "no bills should be passed" by Congress until Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

The latest spending plan was the second in as many days which failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass the lower chamber of Congress, with 38 Republicans voting against the bill on Thursday night.
This was in defiance of Trump who the day before had thwarted a previous cross-party funding deal that the Republican House leadership had struck with Democrats, after heavy criticism of the measure by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

After the initial bill failed by 174 votes to 235, Johnson said he would come up with another solution before government funding lapses at midnight on Friday.

"We will regroup and we will come up with another solution, so stay tuned," Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson - who led the negotiations - told reporters.

Republicans will likely try again Friday with a more pared-down Bill, although the party leadership offered no clear path forward, telling reporters they would have to meet to discuss a Plan C.