Congressional casework is hard. The shutdown is making it harder

For most of this year, caseworkers in Rep. Suhas Subramanyam’s office have struggled to get through to federal agencies, as mass layoffs rippled through the Trump administration.

His staff was starting to make inroads again with certain agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service, the Virginia Democrat said.

Then, the shutdown came.

“They have gone back to not being responsive. And when I say not responsive, I mean you can’t get a hold of a human being on the phone,” Subramanyam said. “You’re just getting answering machines saying that we’re in a shutdown.”

The current lapse in government funding has taken what’s already a tough job and raised the stakes, said Anne Meeker, a former congressional caseworker.

“This is probably one of the worst and most difficult shutdowns that most caseworkers working today will have seen,” said Meeker, now managing director at POPVOX Foundation.

Caseworkers are the unsung group of congressional aides who deal directly with constituents, trying to help them with problems ranging from immigration cases, to veterans benefits, to Social Security payments and more. They guide ordinary people through the maze of government bureaucracy — and to do so, they rely on their relationships with liaisons at federal agencies.

Now many of those agencies have stopped responding, effectively bringing some forms of constituent services to a screeching halt. As the government shutdown stretches into its fourth week, that interruption in service has spurred cross-party tension and left some constituents without a valuable lifeline.

“Because of the Schumer Shutdown, our caseworkers are not able to assist constituents with their cases because agency workers are furloughed,” Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon said in a statement, blaming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer for the funding stalemate that began Oct. 1. “We have constituents waiting for answers from the IRS, Veterans Affairs and Department of Labor, and they shouldn’t have to wait because Senate Democrats won’t open the government.”

Some of this is not new. When the government partially shuttered in 2018–19 for 35 days, caseworkers had to navigate a patchwork of contacts depending on which congressional liaisons were still at work.

But this time around, they are dealing with an executive branch already thinned out by an aggressive push earlier in the Trump administration, led in part by Elon Musk, to cut jobs and shrink the civil service.

And while the legislative branch was already funded during the previous partial shutdown, meaning congressional staff were still collecting paychecks, this time they are showing up to work without pay, like other essential workers across the government.

Meanwhile, they’re dealing with a climate of heightened fear in the wake of two high-profile political assassinations this year and rising threats against members of Congress and their staff.

According to one Senate Democratic aide, who worked through prior shutdowns in 2013 and 2018, many caseworkers are anxious about potentially being targeted by an angry constituent. In at least one instance during the shutdown, her office received a profanity-laced email from someone they were trying to help.

“It’s frustrating, it’s disheartening, it’s sad. People are definitely discouraged,” said the aide, who was granted anonymity because she is not authorized to speak to the press. “I think the people who answer the phones … are definitely feeling abused a bit.”

While caseworkers have traditionally operated above the political fray, the aide said that dynamic has started to change.

“I’ve just seen a really sharp withdrawal of Republicans participating in these casework chats that we have and the meetings that we have, and any kind of collaboration. They’ve just kind of disappeared,” the aide said.

Essential services

While not every federal agency has stopped responding to congressional staffers, multiple caseworkers described inquiries going unanswered this month. One auto-response email from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Congressional Relations states that until the government reopens, “staff are currently out of the office and unable to respond to emails, phone calls, or [perform] other work-related duties.”

Other messages are more political in nature.

“Because Senate Democrats decided to block a clean, routine government funding bill, OPM was forced to halt all non-shutdown-related work — including congressional constituent services — at the close of business on September 30, 2025,” reads one auto-reply from the legislative affairs division of the Office of Personnel Management. “We hope Senate Democrats come to their senses and pass a continuing resolution to end the government shutdown.”

At least at the moment, there seems little hope of the GOP-led continuing resolution passing. The bill continues to go down in the Senate, largely along party lines.

In the meantime, Rep. Joseph D. Morelle, D-N.Y., and other Democrats have urged the Trump administration to restore some staffing in the executive branch to allow casework to proceed.

“When these channels of communication are disrupted, the consequences are immediate and personal — delayed benefits, financial hardship, and increased frustration among the American people who depend on their government to function effectively,” Morelle and 22 other House Democrats wrote to President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought earlier this month. The letter cites reports that the Social Security Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and IRS had ceased constituent casework operations.

“These are effectively essential services. Let’s say you have a visa or a passport problem. Those offices may be barebones, but they should continue to function,” Morelle said on Monday. “I think it’s the administration’s way of causing pain.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans have been mostly in their home districts since the start of the shutdown, a decision that Democrats say has to do with fear of a vote over releasing documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Speaker Mike Johnson, who has sought to place blame for the shutdown on Senate Democrats, said last week that members of the House GOP were home to help their constituents.

“They’re helping the American people navigate the mess that the Democrats have created,” Johnson said at an Oct. 16 press conference. “Staying back to work with our constituents was a decision that we made very thoughtfully and we made collectively as a group.”

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler held a press conference in his home district on Monday that featured a group of constituents that had been helped by his office. He touted more than 7,500 cases closed since he came to Congress in 2023. And unlike some of his colleagues, Lawler’s message was that constituent services continue despite the shutdown.

“If you’re struggling to get help from a federal agency, reach out. We’re here to serve you,” he said.

Casework, he said, “too often doesn’t get enough attention — the work congressional offices do every day to help people, even when Washington grinds to a halt.”