The stopgap that's keeping the government open
expires December 11. Congress is out until after the November 3 election, none of the twelve appropriations bills has been enacted, and the lame-duck session has to clear the funding deadline, a surface transportation extension, the flood insurance program, and the veterans' COLA bill in about four working weeks. Whether that produces a shutdown is anyone's guess. What a shutdown would do to veterans isn't, because we watched one for 43 days last fall.
What kept running in 2025
Disability compensation, pension, and DIC payments went out on schedule through the entire October 1 to November 12, 2025 lapse. That's not luck. Congress funds VA benefits a year in advance, so the money for your monthly check was appropriated before the fight started. The VA's own lapse plan excepted about 97% of its workforce, which is why regional offices kept deciding claims and C&P exams, most of which are run by contractors, kept getting scheduled.
VA health care ran normally. Hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and the Veterans Crisis Line don't close in a lapse.
What didn't
Two things broke, and both are instructive.
The first was the GI Bill. Despite the VA's public assurance that mandatory payments would process normally, Post-9/11 GI Bill housing allowances and tuition payments, along with Chapter 31 and Chapter 35 education benefits, stopped arriving for thousands of veteran students in the second week.
The ranking members of both veterans' committees wrote to Secretary Collins on October 9
asking why, noting that education benefits had been paid through earlier shutdowns under both parties. The lesson for a student veteran: the compensation check is protected by advance appropriations in a way the education payment, in practice, was not.
The second was the VA's attempt to stop its own appeals. In late October, the Secretary asked the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims to halt proceedings in nearly every pending case, arguing that the agency's litigation attorneys weren't excepted employees and would run out of funding on October 28.
A nine-judge panel refused, called the request "significant and extreme," and held that judicial review of veterans' benefits is an excepted function that continues during a lapse. The VA then had its lawyers work without pay. The court handles about 15,000 cases a year, and a granted stay would have frozen almost all of them.
That episode is worth remembering if December 11 goes badly. The VA's first instinct in a lapse was to pause the part of the system that reviews its own decisions. The court said no once. The next motion will be drafted with that ruling in mind.
What a December lapse would mean for you
Your monthly check: arrives. The December benefit is paid December 31 regardless, and if the COLA bill has passed, it carries the 3.6%. If the COLA bill is caught in the same logjam as the funding bill, the check arrives at the old rate and the raise comes retroactively later.
The 2027 chart applies either way.
A pending claim: keeps moving, more slowly. Regional offices stayed open in 2025, but a lapse that runs long thins the staff that processes the overflow, and the December push toward year-end goals gets disrupted. If you're waiting on a decision, don't read a delay as a denial.
A C&P exam: probably happens. Contract examiners are paid from funds already obligated. If yours gets canceled, it gets rescheduled, and you should document the cancellation in case the VA later treats it as a no-show.
A Board hearing: the Board kept working in 2025. Expect it to again.
A Court appeal: keeps running, per the 2025 ruling. Your deadlines do not pause. The 120-day window to appeal a Board decision to the Court runs during a shutdown, and the court's new case management system, which took over all new filings on October 1, is
the same one in a lapse as out of it.
GI Bill, VR&E, and Chapter 35: at risk, based on 2025. If you're a student veteran who depends on the housing allowance, the time to talk to your school's certifying official and your landlord is before December 11, not after.
The VA debt collection letter: keeps coming. Debt Management Center operations continued in 2025. A shutdown isn't a reason to ignore a notice with a deadline in it.
The thing to do now
Nothing dramatic. File what you were going to file, because the effective date is set by the date the VA receives the claim, shutdown or not. Keep copies. If a deadline of yours falls in mid-December, meet it early. And if you're a student veteran, plan for the housing allowance to be late, so that if it isn't, you're ahead.
Where we come in
We're a veteran-led firm, and our deadlines ran through the last shutdown the same as our clients' did. If something in your file is sitting on a December date,
reach out.
