US government enters shutdown as Congress fails to reach funding deal

The US government begins shutting down after midnight Wednesday, local time, as lawmakers and US President Donald Trump fail to break a budget impasse during acrimonious talks that hinged on Democratic demands for health care funding.

It is the first shutdown in almost seven years, when the US saw the longest shutdown in history, lasting 35 days. Work will stop at multiple federal departments and agencies, affecting hundreds of thousands of government workers.

Trump blames Democrats over the stalled talks and threatens to punish the party and its voters during the stoppage by targeting progressive priorities and forcing mass public sector job cuts.

“So we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected. And they’re Democrats, they’re going to be Democrats,” Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office.

He says a “lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” and suggested he would use the pause to “get rid of a lot of things we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.”

US Government operations began grinding to a halt at 12:01 a.m. Washington, DC, time, after a frenetic but ultimately failed bid in the Senate to rubber-stamp a short-term funding resolution already approved by the House of Representatives.

Democrats, in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have been seeking to flex their rare leverage over the federal government eight months into Trump’s barnstorming second term, which has seen entire government agencies dismantled. The 100-member Senate requires government funding bills to receive 60 votes — seven more than the Republicans control.

Republicans had proposed to extend current funding until late November, pending negotiations on a longer-term spending plan. But Democrats wanted to see hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending restored.

It remains unclear how long the shutdown will last. The Senate will be out on Thursday for the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, but will be back on Friday and possibly in session through the weekend.

The shutdown will not affect vital functions like the Postal Service, the military, and welfare programs like Social Security and food stamps.