For decades, I had the privilege of knowing Senator Joe Lieberman as a mentor, a boss, and a dear friend. I served as his Chief of Staff on Capitol Hill from 2003 to 2013, where I watched him build the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the ground up with members of both parties. After 9/11, Sen. Lieberman worked with Republicans Fred Thompson and Susan Collins to draft the Homeland Security Act of 2002, merging 22 federal agencies into a single department charged with protecting the American people. It was not easy. It required serious people in serious rooms making difficult choices under enormous pressure. That is what governing looks like.

I have been thinking about that often these days. Because the department Sen. Lieberman and his colleagues built is now one week away from shutting down, and no one in Washington appears to be doing much about it.

In case you have not been closely following the news, here is where things stand. Congress funded most of the federal government through September 30 in a package signed by President Trump on February 3. DHS was the exception, receiving only a two-week continuing resolution that expires on February 13.

This is because Senate Democrats demanded DHS be separated from the other spending bills after federal immigration agents fatally shot two Americans in Minneapolis. Several Senate Republicans, including Sen. Collins, the current Appropriations Committee Chair, supported the decision to separate DHS and give negotiators more time. Democrats have released a list of enforcement reforms they want in exchange for their votes. Republicans have rejected most of them. And as of this week, there are no formal negotiations between party leaders.

Majority Leader Thune called a deal “an impossibility” in the remaining time, and both chambers left Washington for the weekend. They return with five days on the clock.

If DHS funding lapses, TSA agents will work without pay, FEMA disaster relief will face delays, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will scale back operations. Yet ICE and CBP, the agencies at the center of the dispute, will keep running on $170 billion already appropriated through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The agencies that protect air travelers, respond to hurricanes, and defend against cyberattacks are the ones that go dark. The irony is hard to miss.

This is happening against a backdrop of mounting problems that Washington is also failing to address. The bipartisan effort to extend and reform expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies collapsed this week, with Sen. Bernie Moreno telling reporters it is “effectively over.” Millions of Americans are facing doubled or tripled health insurance premiums with no fix in sight. Meanwhile, the latest ADP jobs report showed only 22,000 private sector jobs added in January, barely half of what economists expected. The official jobs report, delayed by the shutdown, will not arrive until February 11.

We have been in this kind of impasse before. In the fall of 2020, COVID relief was stalled for months because party leaders could not reach agreement. It took a bipartisan group of senators and members of the Problem Solvers Caucus to break the logjam by separating the most contentious issues from the areas of agreement. That model worked. Someone needs to try it again.

If no one does, the consequences will extend well beyond a single agency shutdown. No Labels will soon publish a detailed account of what could happen to ordinary Americans if Washington continues to spend, borrow, and fight while the country’s fiscal foundation erodes. It is a story about a debt crisis, told through the voices of the people who would live through it. We will share it with you in the coming weeks. The reason we wrote it is the same reason I am writing to you now: the warning signs are everywhere, and the people in charge are not paying attention.

Sen. Joe Lieberman used to say that the American people do not have the luxury of waiting for Washington to sort itself out. They need their government to function. A week from now, a significant part of it may not be.