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Trucking regulators and officials who manage the country’s surface transportation network are operating under mostly normal conditions as the partial government shutdown continues.

The department’s plan, released Sept. 30, shows that highway and trucking agencies are among the least affected in a lapse of annual appropriations.

Under the latest plan, air traffic controller hiring and field training would also continue — a key difference from the March plan, which would have paused those activities. 

At least eight cabinet departments comprising more than two-thirds of the federal workforce had detailed their shutdown plans by the afternoon of Sept. 29.

Many federal operations will pause and nonessential employees will be furloughed or fired if lawmakers can’t reach an agreement by the time the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Congress moved closer to an Oct. 1 government shutdown as Senate Democrats and Republicans on Sept. 19 each blocked the other party’s rival plans to provide temporary funding.

With a Sept. 30 federal funding deadline fast approaching, lawmakers in the House and the Senate appear to be at an impasse over ways to avert a partial government shutdown.

House Republicans on March 11 passed legislation to keep the U.S. government open past a March 15 shutdown deadline, daring moderate Democrats in the Senate to block the measure.

Congressional Republican leaders in early March were focused on pursuing a short-term funding extension designed to avert a partial government shutdown this month.

The spending bill would keep the government open through March 14, provide disaster relief and give billions of dollars in economic aid to farmers. It will not suspend the national debt limit.