What contingency plans exist if the 2025 continuing resolution expires without passage?

1. Who keeps working and who gets furloughed — the operational triage that agencies plan for

Agencies apply a similar framework that exempts employees tied to life-or-death, national security, or emergency-response functions while furloughing roles deemed nonessential. The IRS plan projects 39,982 employees (53.8% of its workforce) would remain on duty to support core tax processing, remittances, computer operations, and protective functions during the first five business days of a lapse, with daily Senior Executive Team calls to manage any extension ^[1]. HHS, CDC, and CMS contingency outlines show parallel prioritization: outbreak response, Medicare and Medicaid continuations, and emergency medical regulation persist, but applied research, many regulatory activities, and routine program support would halt or scale back ^[3]. The common theme is continuity for immediate public-safety and benefits delivery, but suspension of many longer-term and administrative activities, producing an uneven patchwork of services that depends on which functions are legally excepted or funded by advance appropriations.

2. What stops, and what that means for people and states

A lapse would suspend a broad set of non-excepted activities — headquarters administrative functions, much applied public health research, some food-safety inspections, and programs that lack carryover or advance funding — translating into tangible disruptions for beneficiaries and state partners. Reports show SNAP allotments were cut in half due to limited funds, states scrambling to recalculate payments, and Head Start programs facing closures that affect childcare and early learning access ^{[4] [6]}. The FDA and CDC would continue core emergency responses but pause routine research and guidance, meaning that slower-moving but important protections and advice to states could vanish during a prolonged lapse ^[3]. The result is frontline emergency continuity paired with suspended preventive, regulatory, and program-administration functions, amplifying localized hardship and administrative backlogs that grow the longer the lapse lasts.

3. Numbers, costs, and scale — how big a shutdown could be

Estimates and agency tallies underscore that a lapse can rapidly affect hundreds of thousands to millions of employees and cost the economy. The Congressional Budget Office and agency reporting framed scenarios where roughly 750,000 employees could be furloughed daily and daily shutdown costs reach about $400 million, with agency-specific plans already counting thousands of excepted workers and large furlough pools ^[5]. The IRS-specific figure of nearly 40,000 excepted staff covers major tax and remittance functions but still leaves a large segment of the workforce idle or in administrative limbo ^[1]. These figures show that even targeted exceptions produce widespread operational and fiscal consequences, and that contingency playbooks are built to triage immediate priorities rather than fully substitute for enacted appropriations.

4. Political maneuvers and partial solutions — what lawmakers are considering

Lawmakers have floated procedural fixes and stopgaps that alter the practical fallout of a CR lapse, including short-term CR extensions, minibuses attaching appropriations bills, or pairing continuing resolutions with policy votes such as health-insurance subsidy extensions. Senate and House discussions in early November showed proposals to combine short-term funding with targeted appropriations and to push deadlines into December or January, reflecting a bipartisan impulse to minimize duration though not necessarily resolve underlying disputes ^{[6] [7]}. These legislative options underscore that the most decisive determinant of who is impacted is not agency plans but how long Congress allows a lapse to continue, meaning rapid political deals can blunt much operational damage while prolonged stalemate magnifies it.

5. Gaps, uncertainties, and uneven transparency — what the public should watch

Contingency plans are agency-specific, often time-limited, and unevenly detailed; OMB declined to centrally compile plans, directing stakeholders to individual agency postings, which creates information gaps and variable transparency for states, beneficiaries, and contractors ^{[5] [2]}. Several reports note plans intended for the initial days of a lapse, with mechanisms like daily executive calls only designed to manage short extensions, leaving unclear how multi-week or multi-month shutdowns would be operationally sustained ^{[1] [8]}. The combined effect is a predictable immediate triage but high uncertainty for longer shutdowns: critical emergency services will persist, but many routine protections, research, and aid programs risk prolonged suspension unless Congress acts.