New York: Vast swathes of the US government ground to a halt at midnight on Wednesday after a standoff between US President Donald Trump and the Democrats cut off funds for the administration’s operations with no signs of an early deal.
Republicans and Democrats offered bills to provide stopgap funding to keep the government running till November 21, but both were defeated, closing all but the essential operations and laying off thousands of employees.
They were scheduled to make another attempt to take up the bill again on Wednesday, but the prospects were dim.
The cuts to social programmes and the size of the funding split the two sides, defeating their resolutions.
The Senate was scheduled to have another round of voting later in the day, but with little chance of breaking the standoff.
The shutdown did not affect essential services like air traffic and security, defence, immigration, and border controls.
Both parties blamed each other for the shutdown after failing to have proper negotiations with Trump.
Among the Democrats’ demands were the restoration of cuts to some healthcare programmes, which the Republicans opposed, saying all their proposals would cost $1 trillion.
The Republican bill, which was passed in the House of Representatives, was opposed by the Democrats because it included those cuts
Without a full budget approved, the Congress needed to pass the temporary funding while they negotiated the budget.
The last government shutdown was in Trump’s last tenure, which lasted 35 days between December 2018 and January 25, 2019.
Although the Republicans have the majority in both houses of Congress, they don’t have the 60 votes required under Senate rules to pass it.
Vice President J.D. Vance said on Fox News: “You don’t shut the government down, you don’t take the government as a hostage, because you want to engage in a negotiation about healthcare costs.”
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Party leader in the Senate, said the Republicans “did not negotiate at all”.
He and the Democrat leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, said in a joint statement: “After months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people.”
(IANS)
