As the federal government shutdown enjoys its third week with no end in sight, Americans are being treated to a common Washington spectacle: breathless media coverage of offline government services, furloughed workers, and rising economic costs—as politicians from both parties fight over who’s to blame (spoiler: the other guy). If you’ve seen more than one shutdown—and, unless you’re in grade school, you have—you know the script well.

Of course, as with any good dramatic series, certain characters and plotlines change with each episode. This time around, there are new wrinkles about possible mass firings (some already walked back), and the shutdown’s MacGuffin is billions in “temporary” Obamacare subsidies that were enacted during the pandemic. Overall, however, it’s pretty standard stuff. Most of the government is actually open, and the drama will almost certainly end like it always does: with an agreement no one likes, with both sides claiming victory, and with little long-term damage to the government or the economy.This reality doesn’t mean, however, that the shutdown is meaningless. Besides the real effects on certain people (especially certain government workers), the shutdown also reveals some serious, structural problems in how Washington operates—problems that neither party seems willing or eager to fix, or even acknowledge. That’s the real shutdown story, not shuttered museums, delayed passport applications, or even the contentious government program at the root of it all.

The Government Isn’t Really ‘Shut Down’

Before we get to that, however, let’s review just how much—or, more accurately, how little—of the federal government is actually shut down. First, the vast majority of the federal workforce is still working. According to the Trump administration’s shutdown contingency plans for executive branch agencies, around 25 percent of federal workers—approximately 547,000 of 2.1 million—were initially furloughed. Since then, the number has climbed to more than 610,000, but that’s still just around 29 percent:

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As the folks at Government Executive explain, the administration has wide latitude to determine who stays or goes during a shutdown, and Trump officials actually erred on “stay” side a little bit more than did previous administrations during recent shutdowns—and not just at the Department of Homeland Security.

More furloughs could come if the shutdown drags on, but Government Executive also notes that some workers could get called back. Regardless, it adds that “following the record-setting 35-day shutdown in 2018 and 2019,” workers who are sent home are guaranteed back pay via the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019. Surely, delayed paychecks can create genuine hardship for some government workers, but this clearly isn’t the halt to government that the term “shutdown” implies.

More importantly, virtually all core government operations continue uninterrupted—and many other services are still being provided. All active-duty military personnel, for example, continue to perform their duties (with the Trump administration controversially paying them through supposedly leftover Pentagon funds—something we will get back to in a moment). Law enforcement agencies—the FBI, CIA, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Coast Guard—all continue operating. Border protection, in-hospital medical care, power grid maintenance, wildfire and disaster response, weather forecasts, air traffic control, TSA, and other infrastructure and/​or safety-related government operations are also proceeding as normal—again, with back pay assured for the workers involved.

Mandatory spending programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are also still (mostly) running because they’re funded through permanent authorizations and thus operate independently of the congressional appropriations process now stymied by the political impasse. Other programs that might eventually stop, such as SNAP and WIC, also have continued because the executive branch tapped into leftover or reserve fu