Government Shutdown Could End This Week: White House Economist

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the U.S. government shutdown, now three weeks old, is “likely to end sometime this week.”

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Oct. 20, the top White House economic adviser said a chorus of Senate Democrats thought that it would be “bad optics” to reopen the government before the “No Kings” rallies.

“Now there’s a shot that this week, things will come together very quickly,” Hassett said. “The moderate Democrats will move forward and get us an open government, at which point we could negotiate whatever policies they want to negotiate with regular order.”

“I think the Schumer shutdown is likely to end sometime this week,” he said, referring to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Thousands of rallies against President Donald Trump took place across the country over the weekend, with individuals protesting the current administration’s policies.

If the government’s doors are not reopened, the White House will examine “stronger measures” that officials could bring to the table, Hassett said. There have been calls for Trump to directly intervene in negotiations, but according to Hassett, the president “has been very active throughout this process.”

“It’s also his position that this is a thing that the Senate needs to work out,” he said.

But time is running out before the Nov. 1 deadline. This is a key date in the ongoing government shutdown because it is the day on which open enrollment for Affordable Care Act plans starts. The next round of military and federal law enforcement paychecks are also scheduled for this day.

Democratic lawmakers have been pushing to extend premium tax credits in the landmark health care legislation, which were extended under President Joe Biden. They have also been fighting against reforms to Medicaid enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Meanwhile, the president told reporters last week that a “very wealthy” donor offered to pay members of the military during the shutdown.

“I actually have a man who is a very wealthy person,” Trump said during his Oct. 14 bilateral meeting with Argentine President Javier Milei at the White House. “He said, ‘If there is any money necessary, shortfall for the paying of the troops, I will pay it,’ meaning he will pay it.”

The upper chamber has held 10 failed votes to reopen the government. An 11th vote is scheduled on Oct. 20 at 5:30 p.m.

Economic Effects

The government shutdown, one of the longest closures in U.S. history, could create real-world consequences, particularly for the economy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking at an Oct. 15 news conference, said the shutdown is costing the economy up to $15 billion a week, reaffirming a recent White House memo.

“We call on the moderate Democrats in the Senate to be heroes—be heroes,” Bessent said. “Break away from the hive of radicalism and do something for the American people. We are starting to cut into muscle here.”

A recent analysis by Oxford Economics estimated that the government shutdown could trim gross domestic product (GDP) growth by as much as 0.2 percentage points per week.

Should the government shutdown last for an entire quarter, the damage to growth could total as much as 2.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter, it states.

“A federal government shutdown won’t change our outlook for GDP, unemployment, or inflation in the next baseline forecast … but it would lend some downside risk to real GDP growth in Q4,” economists wrote in the Oct. 10 report.

A forecast revision would require a shutdown long enough to inflict tangible damage on the broader economy, the economists said.

Previous shutdowns have had little impact on the broader economy, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said. But it does depend on the duration and scale of the shutdown.

“Historically, not-super-wide shutdowns that don’t last for very long kind of do nothing to the aggregate economy because, yeah, they weren’t paid, but people’s spending doesn’t go down because they know they’re going to be paid eventually,” Goolsbee said at an event earlier in October.

“So it depends how long this goes. It depends how wide it is. If there are reasons why this shutdown looks different than previous ones, then we would have to revise. But that’s kind of the starting point.”

Assessing the country’s economic health has been challenging, too, since federal agencies have been unable to release key data, such as employment and inflation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the September consumer price index report on Oct. 24 to ensure that the Social Security Administration has data to calculate the cost-of-living adjustment for retirement benefits.

The odds of the shutdown ending later this week have increased, according to betting website Polymarket. However, predictive markets still anticipate the shutdown lasting into November.