US government shuts down as Republicans, Democrats fail to break impasse
Washington: The United States government has shut down as lawmakers failed to achieve a breakthrough on a funding bill.
As a consequence, the funding for US government departments will be cut and will bring a few federal services to a halt. On Tuesday, Democrats blocked Republicans’ plans to pass the spending bill in the Senate.
Democratic leaders met US President Donald Trump on Monday but failed to come to an agreement.
Hours after the meeting, Trump shared an AI-generated video on Truth Social, mocking House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Trump on Tuesday continued to blame Democrats, saying that he “didn’t see them bend even a little bit.”
He also threatened to fire more federal workers during the shutdown.
“When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Trump said.
Democrats are demanding to reverse the healthcare cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was passed earlier this year.
Republicans assert they would not agree to Democrats’ demands and had proposed to extend funding until November 21.
While the Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, they are seven votes short in the Senate as the funding bill requires 60 votes to pass.
It is the first US government shutdown in seven years, as the last one happened under Trump 1.0 and lasted for 35 days – the longest in history.
Essential services such as border protection, law enforcement and air-traffic control would continue to function while food assistance programmes, government-funded pre-school, food inspectors and operations at national parks could be adversely affected.
If the shutdown is extended over a long period, air travel could face challenges as many of those workers would be forced to work without pay and may not report for duty.