Federal Government Shutdown Begins

WASHINGTON — The federal government started shutting down early Wednesday after Congress failed to approve a funding bill before the beginning of the new fiscal year — resulting in widespread ramifications for hundreds of programs and giving the Trump administration an avenue to fire federal workers en masse.

The Senate was unable to advance two short-term government funding bills Tuesday when Democrats and Republicans deadlocked for the second time this month, with just hours to go before the midnight Tuesday shutdown deadline.

Senators voted 55-45 for a Republican bill that would fund the government for seven weeks, and 47-53 for the Democrats’ stopgap proposal that would keep the lights on for a month and included several health care provisions that they said were needed for their support. Neither had the 60 votes needed to advance. 

Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voted with Republicans on their stopgap bill. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted against it.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said in a memo to departments and agencies Tuesday night after the Senate votes that “affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.” Vought said federal employees should report for their next regularly scheduled shifts to begin shutdown activities.

The consequences of a shutdown will be sweeping in the nation’s capital and across the country, where states have been bracing for the impact. About 750,000 federal workers could be furloughed, leading to an economic impact of $400 million a day, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported. All federal employees will go unpaid until the shutdown is over.

Additionally, the Trump administration plans to lay off thousands of federal employees, which would reshape the federal workforce. President Donald Trump again vowed Tuesday to undertake layoffs and a major government employee union filed suit in federal court in advance of such a move.

More votes on GOP bill planned

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said hours before the votes there wouldn’t be any talks with Democrats during a shutdown. 

“The negotiation happens when the government is open. So let’s keep the government open and then we will have the negotiations,” Thune said. 

“We’re happy to sit down and talk about these issues that they’re interested in,” he said. “But it should not have anything to do with whether or not for a seven-week period we keep the government open, so that this government can continue to do its work and that we can do our work through the regular appropriations process to fund the government.” 

After the votes failed, Thune expressed his frustration with Democrats during a press conference. 

“This is so unnecessary and uncalled for,” he said. 

Thune said he plans to bring up a vote on the continuing resolution again. He said as soon as Wednesday the federal government can be funded if five Democrats voted with Republicans. 

“Democrats may have chosen to shut down the government, but we can reopen it tomorrow,” Thune said. 

Republican Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming said the “cracks in the Democrats are already showing,” noting that three Democrats voted for the Republican bill Tuesday night. 

“There is bipartisan support for keeping the government open,” Barrasso said. “We’re happy to see that the Democrats are already starting to break from [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer] and we’re going to continue to offer a clean [continuing resolution] on the floor of the Senate to open the government for the next seven weeks.”

Health care tax credits at center of standoff

The disagreement isn’t entirely about GOP lawmakers writing their short-term funding bill behind closed doors and then expecting Democrats to help pass it in the Senate, where bipartisanship is required for major legislation.

Democratic leaders have raised concerns for weeks about the end-of-year sunset of enhanced tax credits offered to people who buy their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, arguing that a solution is needed now ahead of the open enrollment period starting on Nov. 1. 

Democrats have also grown increasingly frustrated with the White House budget office’s unilateral actions on spending, arguing that Vought is significantly eroding Congress’ constitutional power of the purse. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the Government Accountability Office should sue the Trump administration over its efforts to freeze or unilaterally cancel spending approved by Congress. 

Schumer said Democrats need an agreement with Republicans to extend the enhanced tax credits. 

Schumer said people will begin getting notices in October telling them how much the premiums for their ACA plans will increase for 2025, which he expects will ratchet up pressure on Republican leaders to broker a bipartisan agreement. 

“We’re going to be right there explaining to them it’s because the Republicans wouldn’t negotiate with us,” Schumer said, laying out the Democrats’ message to the public. “We’re ready to do it anytime. And there will be huge heat on (Republicans) on this issue.”

People who use the enhanced tax credit to buy health insurance on the ACA marketplace could see their annual premiums double on average in 2026 if the credits expire as scheduled at the end of this year, according to a new analysis by the nonprofit health policy research organization KFF, from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 in 2026.

Claims about immigrants 

Schumer also rebuffed GOP leaders who claimed Democrats wanted to include people without legal immigration status in federal health care programs. 

“They say that undocumented people are going to get these credits. That is absolutely false. That is one of the big lies they tell, so they don’t have to discuss the issues,” the New York Democrat said. “The federal government by law that we passed does not fund health insurance for undocumented immigrants in Medicaid, nor the ACA, nor Medicare. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal health insurance premiums.” 

Immigrants in the country without legal authorization are not eligible for Medicaid, and neither are most immigrants with legal status, such as those with student visas or who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. 

Only immigrants with a “qualified status,” such as legal permanent residents, asylees and refugees, are able to get Medicaid benefits, and they usually have to wait five years before their coverage can begin. 

Democrats explain why they voted with GOP 

Cortez Masto of Nevada explained her vote to advance the GOP stopgap bill in a statement, saying she could not support “a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration.”

“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,” she added. “I remain focused on protecting health care for working families, and I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work together to tackle this problem.”

Pennsylvania’s Fetterman wrote in a statement of his own that his vote on the Republican bill “was for our country over my party.

“Together, we must find a better way forward.”

Collins said during a brief interview before the vote she was worried about the broad authority the White House holds during a shutdown and how the Office of Management and Budget has indicated it will use that power. 

“I’m much more concerned about OMB sending signals that there should be mass firings of federal employees who have the misfortune to be designated as non-essential, when in fact they’re performing very essential work, they’re just not being paid,” Collins said.  

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven, chair of the Agriculture spending subcommittee, said lawmakers will have to sort through how various departments implement their contingency plans as well as the possibility of mass layoffs during a shutdown. 

“We’ll have to work through those things and figure out how we do keep things going as best we can during this Democrat shutdown,” Hoeven said.

GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said Republicans were “unified in the belief that this is an easy choice” to fund the government with a stopgap bill that doesn’t include any contentious or political provisions. 

Capito — who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor — said there were several programs that will be “missed” during a shutdown. 

“And that’s concerning. So I think the option is to keep the government open so we can avoid this pain,” Capito said. 

‘I’m not optimistic that we’re going to get a path forward’

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said he was worried about the possible impacts of a shutdown on his home state and that keeping the government open is the only way to avoid that.  

“I’m sure the administration will do everything they can,” Hawley said. “But the solution is to not shut the government down. I mean, why would you punish working people because you’re not getting what you want on any issue, whatever it is?”

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said he doesn’t expect a shutdown will end until after Democrats have sent a message to their voters. 

“I’m not optimistic that we’re going to get a path forward until they’ve had a shutdown,” he said. 

Rounds, who negotiated a handshake agreement with the White House budget director this summer to preserve some funding for rural tribal radio stations after Congress eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said that deal could be affected by a shutdown. 

“They’re putting the administration in a position where they can pick and choose what they’re going to do, and a shutdown is not going to be beneficial to these Native American radio stations,” Rounds said. 

Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said she wants Democrats and Republicans to negotiate on health care provisions.

“I’ve been making the case constantly, that [it] is literally my obligation to try and fight for health care, and I’m willing to talk to anyone,” she said. “I’m willing to accept that I certainly will not get everything I want.”

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said that while Democrats agreed to help advance a continuing resolution in March, they can’t now because of “what President Trump is doing to this country, particularly when it comes to health care costs for families.”  

The shutdown will significantly affect the operations of the federal government as lawmakers have not passed any of the dozen full-year appropriations bills that finance agency operations. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the new fiscal year for the federal government.

Shutdown plan for national parks

Departments began releasing updated contingency plans for shutting down over weekend, detailing how many of their employees would continue working and how many would be furloughed.

The Interior Department, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, posted its updated plans late Tuesday. 

The National Park Service plans to furlough 9,300 of its 14,500 workers. 

The Trump administration will allow government functions necessary for the protection of life or property to continue, including fire suppression for active fires, permitting and monitoring First Amendment activities, border and coastal protection and surveillance, and law enforcement and emergency response.

The contingency plan says that roads, lookouts, trails and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors, but adds that if “access becomes a safety, health or resource protection issue … the area must be closed.”

Union files suit

In anticipation of layoffs by the Trump administration, unions representing more than 1 million federal workers filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California on Tuesday to block the Trump administration from carrying out mass firings. The suit argues that there is no statutory authority to fire federal employees during a government shutdown.

“These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in Congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this Court,” the suit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said.

Ashley Murray and Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.