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‘Will they change course?’: US Senate in deadlock over government shutdown

The third day of the US government shutdown has yielded no breakthrough as Democrats and Republicans split on spending.

“ Well, the shutdown melodrama continues.”

That’s how, with the verbal equivalent of a sigh, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana summed up the third day of the United States government shutdown.

On Friday, the US Senate reconvened before a weekend recess to vote yet again on a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through November 21.

Republicans have touted the resolution as a “clean” budget bill, maintaining the status quo. But Democrats have said they will refuse to consider any bill that does not consider healthcare spending.

By the end of the year, subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are slated to expire, a fact expected to cause insurance premiums to spike for many Americans. And Democrats have called on Republicans to reconsider cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance programme for low-income households, following the passage of a bill earlier this year that narrows its requirements.

But the result has been an impasse on Capitol Hill, with both parties exchanging blame and no resolution in sight. Frustration was visible on both sides.

“This shutdown is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid,” Kennedy said from the Senate floor.

For a fourth time on Friday, Democrats rejected the Republicans’ proposal, which previously passed the House of Representatives along party lines.

Only three senators splintered from the party caucus: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Independent Angus King of Maine.

On the Republican side, Senator Rand Paul also refused to vote alongside members of his party. His concern, he said, was how the spending would contribute to federal debt.

The result was a vote of 54 to 44 in the 100-seat Senate chamber, far short of the 60 votes Republicans need to overcome a Democratic filibuster to scuttle the bill.

As a counterproposal, Democrats put forward a bill that would see more than $1 trillion dedicated to healthcare spending. But that too floundered in a Senate vote.

Finger-pointing on Capitol Hill

In a news conference afterwards, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the deadlock could only be broken if the Republicans changed their tactic and negotiated on the question of healthcare.

“Today, we saw the Republicans run the same play, and they got the same result. The question is: Will they change course?” he told reporters.

Schumer accused Republicans of having “wasted a week” with four votes that ended in the same result.

“ My caucus and Democrats are adamant that we must protect the healthcare of the American people,” he said. “ Instead of trying to come to the table and negotiate with Democrats and reopen the government, the White House and fellow Republicans have vowed to make this a ‘maximum pain’ shutdown.”

Republican leaders, meanwhile, accused the Democrats of attempting to bog down the process instead of proceeding with the status quo.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also argued that programmes like Medicaid were in desperate need of reform.

“Medicaid has been rife with fraud and abuse, and so we reformed it. Why? To help provide more and better health services for the American people,” he said at a news conference. “ We had so many people on Medicaid that never were intended to be there.”

Johnson accused Schumer of attempting to appeal to the progressive branch of the Democratic Party, in anticipation of a 2028 primary for his Senate seat: “ He’s got to show that he’s fighting Republicans.”

Both sides of the aisle, however, expressed sympathy for the federal workers caught in the middle of the shutdown.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that nearly 750,000 people are facing furloughs each day the shutdown continues. Others are required to keep working without pay.

The total compensation for the furloughed employees amounts to roughly $400m per day, according to the budget office’s statistics. Thanks to a 2019 law, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, federal employees will eventually receive backpay – but only after the shutdown concludes.

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