Voters Are Concerned About the Implications of a Potential Government Shutdown
By Grace Adcox and Rob Todaro
A government shutdown occurs when Congress fails to pass appropriations legislation to fund the federal government. Lawmakers need to pass an agreement to fund the government by Sept. 30 to prevent such a shutdown, which would be the fourth over the last decade. The Democrat-controlled Senate has already passed its own bipartisan funding bills out of its Appropriations Committee and is expected to pass a full stopgap funding package with bipartisan support in the coming days. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is just returning from its summer recess and still needs to debate and pass its own spending package. The feasibility of reaching an agreement by the funding deadline remains unclear as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces disarray and a litany of demands from the Republican conference.
The House Freedom Caucus, a group of around 40 far-right conservative and MAGA Republican members of Congress, is threatening a shutdown by demanding steep spending cuts — even lower than the spending cap agreed upon in the bipartisan debt ceiling deal in May — and policy concessions, including defunding the Department of Justice and the various prosecutions of former President Trump and cutting funding aid to Ukraine, while also investing more than $2 billion to build and expand Trump’s incomplete wall along the border of Mexico. The Freedom Caucus has also said it will oppose any stopgap funding measure that does not end “woke” policies in the military, including restricting service members’ access to abortion and transgender medical care — proposals that Data for Progress has previously found voters largely oppose.
New Data for Progress polling finds that a majority of voters, including 73% of Democrats and half of Independents, think that McCarthy should quickly encourage the House to pass spending bills that match bipartisan Senate bills to prevent a shutdown. This includes 30% of Republicans. However, a majority of Republicans (53%) think McCarthy should holdout to reduce spending and include other priorities in these bills, even if that means risking a shutdown.
Data for Progress also asked voters if they are concerned at all about the potential negative implications of a government shutdown on various federal programs, workers, and contractors. Across the board, a majority of voters are “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned.”
Voters express the most concern about SNAP recipients losing access to their food benefits 30 days after a shutdown (45% describe themselves as “very concerned”), the EPA and FDA temporarily halting site inspections for potential human and environmental safety risks (42% very concerned), and federal contract workers being put on temporary leave without back pay (36% very concerned).
These findings indicate that voters are concerned about the implications of a potential government shutdown and would prefer that McCarthy pursue bipartisan solutions to keep the federal government funded.
Grace Adcox (@GraceAdcox) is a polling analyst at Data for Progress.
Rob Todaro (@robtodaro) is the Communications Director at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology
From September 1 to 4, 2023, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,209 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.