The federal government officially entered a shutdown at midnight on Wednesday after congressional leaders were unable to reach a deal on a stopgap spending bill, leaving lawmakers grasping at straws over how to break the impasse.
The shutdown became a certainty after lawmakers voted down a pair of stopgap funding packages — one a “clean” bill offered by Republicans, the other filled with Democratic priorities — on Tuesday evening, with few discussions taking place between the party leaders to find a pathway to a deal.
In the interim, both sides are engaging in a blame game that has been red-hot for days.
“The Democrat caucus here in town in the Senate has chosen to shut down the government over a clean, nonpartisan funding bill. That’s right — a clean, nonpartisan funding bill,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters after the votes. “Senate Democrats said ‘no.’ Because far left interest groups and far left Democrat members wanted a showdown with the president.”
“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown—rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill, and risking America’s healthcare, worst of all,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters. “They’ve got to sit down and negotiate with Democrats to come to a bill that both parties can support.”
The lapse in funding marks the fourth government shutdown in the 21st century and the first since 2019 when a fight over border wall funding resulted in a 35-day ordeal — the longest in U.S. history.
The Trump administration is moving ahead with shutdown plans across the government, which is expected to result in widespread furloughs and the potential of firings for some government workers across numerous agencies and departments.
“Affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown,” the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in a memo on Tuesday night,” adding that it was “unclear” how long it will last. “Redgardless, employees should report to work for their next regularly scheduled tour of duty to undertake orderly shutdown activities.”
OMB added that it would issue another memo later on Wednesday. The upper chamber also sent out a note to top staffers laying out shutdown guidance for Senate offices.
At the heart of the shutdown is an insistence by Democrats that the stopgap bill must include a provision to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, and a refusal by Republicans to include the credits in government funding negotiations.
The tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year and are expected to cause an increase in health insurance premiums.
Democrats have called for those subsidies to be extended permanently, which Republicans have no appetite for.
“Now, it’s on their backs,” Schumer told reporters on Tuesday night, noting that roughly 24 million Americans will be affected and see their premiums more than double. “If you think people don’t like it now, there’s going to be a crescendo as through the beginning of October. The vast majority of Americans get those bills [then] and they’re going to say, ‘What the heck are we going to do?’”
While some Republicans have indicated they are worried about how a sharp increase in health care costs would affect their constituents, they believe the subsidies need to be reformed, including potentially adding means-testing.
Republicans also believe the discussions about the tax credits should take place separately from the stopgap fight, and could instead be part of a larger, full-year funding bill passed later in the year.
For now, GOP leaders indicated they are focused on winning over the requisite five additional Democrats needed to put their seven-week stopgap over the line. The vote on Tuesday saw the level of support from across the aisle jump from one to three after Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Angus King (I-Maine) joined Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) in backing the “clean” bill.
Cortez Masto cited rising costs, “an economic slowdown and a looming health care crisis” as reasons for her “aye” vote in a statement.
“This administration doesn’t care about Nevadans, but I do. That’s why I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” she said. “We need a bipartisan solution to address this impending health care crisis, but we should not be swapping the pain of one group of Americans for another.”
Thune told reporters that discussions are going on at the member level with a number of Democrats that Republicans believe could end up backing the package. The GOP leader is expected to hold daily votes on the “clean” CR, with the hope of breaking off enough to win the needed 60 votes.
“There are conversations going on on a regular basis. … We have a number of our colleagues who are interested in getting out of this pickle that their leader has put them in,” Thune said. “I think that there is a recognition that the strategy that the Democrat leadership is employing here is the wrong one, which is … what’s changed the vote between then and now.”
“We’ll see where it goes,” he continued. “We’re going to have some more votes and we’ll see where the Democrats come down.”
The vote came after a separate one on the Democratic-proposed CR, which includes a permanent extension of the ACA credits and a reversal of both the Medicaid cuts implemented in the “big, beautiful bill” and rescissions.
The Senate is set to reconvene on Wednesday morning and vote on the CR at some point. The chamber is expected to be dormant on Thursday due to Yom Kippur before returning for work on Friday and the weekend to continue voting.
With a shutdown now in effect, members are now shifting their mindset to a question that has vexed them for weeks: What’s the avenue to reopen the government?
It’s not an easy question to answer.
“It’s a lot of work,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “I don’t even know what the path is right now.”
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