No Power Shut-Offs During Shutdowns: New Bill Ties Utility Service to HHS Funding Status

When Congress can’t agree on funding, the federal government shuts down. For most people, that means closed parks and delayed paperwork. But the Stop Shut-Offs During Shutdowns Act addresses a much more critical problem: losing power or heat because your income or benefits are suddenly interrupted by the shutdown.

This bill introduces a new layer of consumer protection by linking utility access directly to the funding status of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Essentially, if HHS doesn’t have full or interim funding, electric utilities are legally prohibited from terminating your service for non-payment. This is a crucial distinction: the ban kicks in only when HHS is unfunded, not necessarily during every single lapse in government appropriations. The goal is clear: prevent vulnerable people from losing essential services when government safety nets might be temporarily frozen.

The Power Switch: Mandatory vs. Recommended

Here’s where the bill gets specific about who has to do what. For electric utilities, the prohibition is mandatory: they cannot terminate service when HHS funding lapses (Section 3). This is a hard rule. If you’re an electric customer, you are protected during that specific window, and the utility can’t charge you for reconnection or slap you with late fees.

However, for natural gas utilities, the protection is softer. The bill includes a “Sense of Congress” (Section 2) that recommends state regulators and gas companies follow the same rules: no shut-offs, no reconnection fees, and reasonable efforts to restore service. This means natural gas customers rely on the goodwill and cooperation of their state regulators and utility providers, while electric customers have a legal mandate backing them up. This uneven protection is a key detail, meaning your heat might be safer than your lights depending on your state and fuel source.

The Utility Bill: Who Pays the Tab?

Utilities aren't charities, so the bill has to address how they cover the costs of providing free service during a shutdown. The legislation is very clear on one point: the utility cannot retroactively charge the specific customers whose service was kept on because of the ban. This prevents a homeowner from getting a massive, surprise bill the moment the shutdown ends.

But the costs still exist. To handle this, the bill allows state regulatory authorities to create an alternative recovery mechanism for utilities (Section 3). If a utility can show that the costs incurred from complying with the ban were “substantial” and “prudently incurred,” and they can’t recover them through normal rates or government aid, the state can find another way to pay. This is a potential cost shift. While it protects the individual customer who avoided a shut-off, it opens the door for these costs to be spread across the entire rate base—meaning all customers could eventually see slightly higher rates to cover the utility’s mandated losses during the shutdown period. The definition of “substantial” and “prudently incurred” is left up to state regulators, which introduces some medium-level vagueness that could affect future rate cases.