WASHINGTON — The U.S. government officially shut down at midnight after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on how to extend federal funding.
President Donald Trump’s Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress, but it needs Democratic support to pass a bill in the Senate, where 60 votes are required. And the two parties failed to craft a bipartisan bill, with the Senate rejecting both a GOP proposal and a Democratic proposal just hours before the shutdown deadline.
It’s the first government shutdown since 2018, in Trump’s first term, which was the longest ever at 34 days, lasting into early 2019. There is no clear path to a resolution, with the two sides fundamentally at odds over how to resolve the impasse.
Federal employees will go without pay for the duration of a shutdown, while members of Congress and Trump will still receive their salaries. About 750,000 employees will be furloughed each day, the Congressional Budget Office said, while others who work essential jobs, like Transportation Security Administration agents, air traffic controllers, federal law enforcement officers and members of the military, will be forced to work without pay.
Under federal law, they are all scheduled to receive back pay once the government reopens, even for the time some didn’t work. Compensation for furloughed workers will cost taxpayers $400 million, according to the CBO.
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National parks will remain partially open during the shutdown. Medicare and Social Security benefits are unchanged, as they aren’t subject to the annual funding process, though new applicants could face delays due to workers’ being on furlough.
Trump, meanwhile, suggested Tuesday he could fire “many” federal employees in a shutdown.
The clash comes after months of political warfare between the two parties, with Democrats demanding provisions to extend health care funding — most notably Obamacare subsidies set to expire and raise people’s premiums at the end of this year. They also sought assurances that Trump won’t keep unilaterally withholding spending directed by Congress.
GOP leaders declined to haggle over a short-term bill to prevent a shutdown temporarily, offering a proposal that would keep the government open at current spending levels until Nov. 21. They said they’ll negotiate spending policy only through the regular federal funding process. Democratic leaders said that’s not enough, vowing to oppose any bill that failed to include their priorities.
The West Wing has seemed to relish the coming battle, believing Democrats will shoulder the blame and eventually cave in.
A White House official said it’ll be hard for Democrats to defend why they’re not agreeing to a “clean” funding bill to keep the government open. A second White House official noted that Trump held two health care-related events Tuesday, related to drug prices and pediatric cancer.
Still, three members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted for the Republican bill Tuesday night: John Fetterman, D-Pa., Angus King, I-Maine, and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. That means they’ll need at least five more Democrats to pass it.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., suggested that more Democrats could support the GOP bill once the pain of a shutdown begins.
“The cracks in the Democrats are already showing,” Thune told reporters. “There are Democrats who are very unhappy with the situation. … Tonight was evidence that there is some movement there.”
Thune has said he won’t negotiate policy with Democrats while they take the government “hostage,” an analogy he has made repeatedly in recent days.
But the Senate’s top Democrat vowed to hold firm against a bill that lacks Democratic input.
“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown — rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill and risking America’s health care 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 next steps could be dictated by the court of public opinion, as each party believes the other will take more of the blame for a shutdown. A New York Times survey released Tuesday found that 26% would blame Trump and the GOP, while 19% would blame Democrats, 33% said they’d blame both equally, and 21% more were undecided. A Marist University poll found that 38% would blame Republicans, 27% would blame Democrats, and 31% would blame both equally.
The shutdown came after a White House meeting Monday between Trump and leaders of both parties, the first time Trump had discussed the issue with the minority leaders, Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. The meeting yielded no breakthroughs and even led to a new round of partisan sniping, which Trump initiated hours later by posting an insulting artificial intelligence-generated video of the two Democrats.
The next morning, Jeffries called Trump a coward.
“Mr. President, the next time you have something to say about me, don’t cop out through a racist and fake AI video. When I’m back in the Oval Office, say it to my face,” he said Tuesday on the Capitol steps. “Say it to my face.”
The second White House official dismissed any criticism of the video. “It was funny,” the official said, adding that despite the backlash, it had the intended effect: Many news channels replayed it, making the Democrats look foolish.
The bitter fighting and the lack of any further bipartisan talks foreshadowed the shutdown.
White House budget director Russell Vought issued a memo hours before the midnight deadline saying agency heads should “execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”
“It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict. Regardless, employees should report to work for their next regularly scheduled tour of duty to undertake orderly shutdown activities,” Vought said in his memo.
Less than an hour later, the Senate adjourned, calling it a night with no solution. It will return Wednesday, but with no clear plan to break the impasse. Thune said he hopes Democratic lawmakers will take a stand against their leadership.
“I just think they’re under so much pressure from the left in the country,” Thune told NBC News. “But I do think that they have rank-and-file members who really want to be in a different position than the one they’re in right now.”
It is unclear when the government will reopen. Republicans feel compelled to defend Trump’s policies that the opposition party is seeking to undo, like his Medicaid cuts. And Democrats face pressure from their base to take a more aggressive posture against second-term Trump, who they say is behaving like an autocrat.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Tuesday that he expected the shutdown to last until at least next week.
“I don’t think anything’s going to happen until the House gets back,” he said, predicting Democrats would soften. “Then people can sit down and find a way to get it done.”