Ben Shapiro: “It kind of feels like, you know, a government shutdown is mostly the stuff you need and kind of gets rid of a lot of the stuff you don't”
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From the October 1, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): There's a constant suggestion that during a government shutdown, everybody gets fired. The entire government shuts down. You know, everyone dies just like during net neutrality.
So, I asked our friends and sponsors over at Comet, a project of Perplexity, what percentage of the federal workforce continues to work during a government shutdown? And the answer is during a government shutdown, about 60 to 75% of the entire federal workforce continues to work, either because they are considered essential or they're funded through sources not affected by annual appropriations. Recent estimates from the Trump administration indicate less than a quarter of federal employees would be furloughed, meaning about 77% would continue to work using newer contingency plans for the 2025 shutdown. Essential personnel like law enforcement, military, air traffic controllers, and those funded by mandatory spending like Social Security continue to work without pay until appropriations resume. And departments like Veteran Affairs and Treasury furlough less than 5% of their employees keeping pretty much everybody working. So, I mean, it kind of feels like, you know, a government shutdown is mostly the stuff you need and kind of gets rid of a lot of the stuff you don't.
Now, apparently, the Trump administration is continuing along the lines of saying, if there if there is a shutdown, then I guess we'll we'll fire people. Here's what President Trump had to say about that. He says a shutdown means not like what Democrats thought it meant when there was a shutdown where they were shutting down services in order to harm the American people and make it uncomfortable. Trump's basically like, you know what? You want to shut down the government and furlough the government? Some of those people ain't coming back.