US Govt Shuts Down as Congress Fails to Reach New Funding Deal
CHIGOZIE AMADI
Funding for the US government has been cut off after President Donald Trump’s Republican Party failed to agree with opposition Democrats on a way forward on a spending bill. This means that some US government services came to a temporary halt.
Although budget confrontations are common in US politics, this spending fight is especially tense because Trump has spent the last nine months drastically cutting the size of the national government. He has suggested that the present impasse could give him an opportunity to do more of this.
This development happened because the Republicans and Democrats could not come together and pass a bill funding government services into October and beyond. The Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but in the Senate – or upper chamber – they are short of the 60 votes they need to pass a spending bill. Opposition Democrats, therefore, have some leverage.
Both sides have been in a bitter standoff over healthcare spending, and the Democrats have refused to back a Republican bill that they say will make it harder for Americans to afford healthcare.
They are calling for an extension of tax credits – which are set to expire – that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans, and for a reversal of cuts to Medicaid that have been made by Trump. Democrats also oppose spending cuts to government health agencies.
A stopgap bill was earlier passed in the House, or lower chamber, but is yet to clear the Senate.
The last time this happened, in 2018, the shutdown was the longest in history at 35 days. Government shutdowns are easy to get into, but not so easy to get out of. In this case, it really depends on when – or if – one of the parties will agree to a compromise.
There are two main ways this could end – either the Republicans negotiate an extension to the healthcare subsidies that the Democrats are demanding, or the shutdown becomes so disruptive that the Democrats back down and agree to fund the government – at least temporarily – to get things up and running again.
So far, the Trump administration has been unwilling to offer any substantive concessions, and believe the Democrats will bear the brunt of the public’s blame because they are the side making demands in exchange for keeping the government open.
Democrats, meanwhile, believe their push for preserving health-insurance subsidies is a popular one, the BBC reported.
What is more, their congressional leaders provoked the ire of left-wing activists for backing down during the last budget bout in March. Many Democrats are itching for a bigger fight this time around – and funding the government is one of the only places where their party has some leverage.
Not all of the government will shut down – those deemed essential workers continue as normal, although without pay for the time being.
Border protection, law enforcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, in-hospital medical care and air-traffic control workers are expected to continue to operate as usual.
While social security and Medicare cheques will still be sent out, benefit verification and card issuance may stop. Government employees deemed non-essential are temporarily put on unpaid leave. In the past, these workers have then been paid retrospectively.
That means that services like the food assistance programme and federally-funded pre-school and institutions like the Smithsonian museums will likely be curtailed or closed.
Several agencies, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are likely to furlough many workers, affecting ongoing research and experiments already in progress.
National parks and forests remained open during the last shutdown, but with few or no staff. This led to vandalism, littering and looting of historical sites, park advocates said.
There could also be travel delays. Flight systems might “need to slow down, reducing efficiency”, a representative from Airlines for America has warned. Passport agencies have warned that it could take longer than usual to process travel documents.
Mail will still be delivered and post offices will remain open because the US Postal Service does not depend on Congress for funding.
Most American schools are state-funded, however the federal government is responsible for billions of dollars in grants and student loans, which could effectively come to a halt. That said – because the grants are awarded during the summer, they will be largely unaffected during this shutdown, the education secretary has said.
Government shutdowns often start off slow, but the pain steadily builds and has a knock-on effect not only to federal workers, but ordinary Americans. Overall, analysts expect that this shutdown could be bigger than the last one in 2018.
Around 750,000 federal workers – roughly 40 per cent – will be taking unpaid leave each day, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). What stands out about this current standoff is the position of Trump’s team.
In the past, long shutdowns were usually seen as politically dangerous, hampering both voters’ everyday lives and the images of lawmakers and the president.
But this time, the Trump administration appears more than happy to shutter large parts of the US government for an extended period. In fact, officials have threatened to use a shutdown to identify “non-essential” workers who could then be permanently let go. “We’ll be laying off a lot of people,” Trump said on Tuesday.
Also, after previous shutdowns, government operations mostly returned to normal, with staff and spending levels largely going back to what they had been before, once the standoff was resolved.
Over the past nine months, however, the Trump administration has slashed spending and pushed workers out of their jobs, testing the boundaries of presidential power. A shutdown could allow the administration to accelerate its massive reductions.
While both sides are blaming each other for the situation, they did make last-ditch efforts to try to avoid it.
On Monday, Trump met all four congressional leaders – the top Democrats in the House and Senate as well as their Republican counterparts. But there was little progress, and both sides appeared to have dug deeper into their positions.
