Government Shutdown Gives Cover for Layoffs, Ruling Class Scuffles Over State Bureaucracy

4,108 federal employees have been laid off since the start of the ongoing federal government shutdown on October 1, according to a statement filed on Tuesday (10/14) by the Department of Justice. Alongside the layoffs, roughly 750,000 federal employees are furloughed (temporarily not working and not receiving pay) and hundreds of thousands are working without pay as of October 10.

Trump has threatened not offering back pay for some furloughed employees, stating “There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way” at a press conference on October 7.

The shutdown started due to lack of congressional approval on a funding bill for federal agencies in the 2026 fiscal year as the two mafias (Republican and Democratic) refuse to compromise on funding allocation.

The ruling class mafias point fingers at one another, with both Republican Office of Management and Budget Director and Project 2025 contributor Russ Vought and Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claiming that the shutdown is a pressure tactic to get their mafia to vote for the other’s legislation. However, it is also providing cover for further mass layoffs of government workers and restructuring of the government bureaucracy.

In response to the shutdown, air traffic controllers have called in sick en masse in a wildcat strike against working without pay, with National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) brass denouncing the action in a statement that reads: “NATCA does not endorse, support, or condone any federal employees participating in or endorsing a coordinated activity that negatively affects the capacity of the [National Airspace System].” One of the major factors to the end of the 35-day-long 2018-2019 government shutdown was the mass sick-leaves taken by air traffic controllers, resulting in limited flights and added pressure on the ruling class to end the shutdown.

President Trump regarding the shutdown has stated: “A lot of good can come from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things,” cutting roughly $27 billion from Democratic districts as a means of placing the state bureaucracy more firmly in the hands of the Republican mafia.

SNAP—the main government food assistance program—has stated that the program will be unable to provide full benefits if the shutdown continues into November. The WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) food aid program was expected to run out of funds this month due to the shutdown, but was kept afloat through the Trump administration providing a $300 million infusion this week, with the funds coming from unspent tariff revenue usually used for child nutrition programs. This temporary allocation is a band-aid fix while the ruling class mafias’ squabbles increase pain for the poorest workers.

The shutdown reflects the deepening imperialist crisis of overproduction, leading to layoffs, furloughs, and the strangling of social programs. The crisis has led the mafias to an increasingly bitter fight over control of the state bureaucracy, with Trump’s moves to layoff government workers through a government shutdown following the overall playbook of the infamous Project 2025, which steers the decomposition of US imperialism towards greater presidential absolutism. This course is also aided by the Democrat mafia but concealed behind their feeble cries in defense of “democracy”, an expression of their opposing views on how best to shore up the decomposing monopoly system of exploitation.

Image: The US Capitol Building. Wikimedia Commons.

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