The Capitol is seen from the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Photo / Tom Brenner, for The Washington Post
Leaders from Congress will meet with United States President Donald Trump at the White House today as both parties blame each other for a looming federal government shutdown set to begin late tomorrow NZT.
If Congress fails to approve a funding extension, spending laws will expire and the US Government will become a bare-bones operation, continuing only functions that are necessary to protect life or public property.
The Senate is expected to vote on two proposals tomorrow that, if passed, would avert a shutdown.
But Republicans and Democrats remain steadfastly opposed to the other party’s plan, and neither proposal is expected to get enough votes.
Republicans are proposing to extend current funding to November 21 to buy more time for bipartisan negotiations over full-year appropriations bills.
They have rejected Democrats’ requests for healthcare changes along with the extension, arguing that Democrats should accept the bill because it does not include any controversial policy priorities and would keep the government running.
“What the Democrats have done here is take the federal government as a hostage, and for that matter, by extension, the American people, to try and get a whole laundry list of things that they want,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (Republican-South Dakota) said on NBC.
Democrats have offered a counterproposal that would extend funding to October 31 and includes several of their preferred policy changes, including: around US$1 trillion for Medicaid by reversing cuts from the GOP tax and spending law; a permanent extension of subsidies for people receiving healthcare on the Affordable Care Act marketplace; and restrictions on the president’s ability to claw back spending approved by Congress.
They say Republicans would be blamed for a shutdown because GOP leaders have so far refused to negotiate with them, even though at least seven Democrats would have to vote to pass a funding extension if all Republicans voted for the GOP bill.
Republican senators Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) have said they will vote against it without changes.
Trump is scheduled to meet leaders of both political parties after abruptly cancelling a similar meeting last week, citing what he called Democrats’ “unserious and ridiculous demands”.
“The meeting is a first step, but only a first step. We need a serious negotiation,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (Democrat -New York) said.
He later added: “There is going to be huge pressure on Republican senators, congressmen and even Trump to do something about this horrible healthcare crisis.”
Trump has given no indication that he plans to consider Democrats’ demands. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Fox News today that Republicans are asking for a “common-sense, clean funding resolution”.
“The President is giving Democratic leadership one last chance to be reasonable, to come to the White House today to try to talk about this and now is not the time to try to get political points against Donald Trump,” she said.
Some moderate Republicans do support Democrats’ call to extend or make permanent the Affordable Care Act subsidies put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, arguing that increased healthcare costs from the subsidies expiring would raise prices for constituents.
Adding that policy to the funding extension would create new challenges: Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have pledged to vote against any funding package that includes an extension to the ACA subsidies.
“Republican leadership must not cut a ‘deal’ at the 11th hour to extend the very Covid-era inflationary subsidies crushing working families with unaffordable ‘insurance,’” Representative Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote on X.
The Republican proposal passed in the House on September 19, primarily along party lines but with the support of one Democrat, Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine). The Senate took up both the Republican and Democratic proposals that afternoon, and both failed to get the 60 votes needed under the chamber’s rules.
The House had been scheduled to come back to Washington from a Rosh Hashanah recess this week, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said the chamber would not reconvene until October 7, leaving the Senate to pass the House measure or force a shutdown. House Democrats, however, still plan to return to the Capitol today.
It is unclear what policy compromise might get enough Democrats on board to support the funding extension - but many have indicated that a promise to negotiate over extending the ACA subsidies would not be enough.
“These people have been trying to repeal and displace people off the Affordable Care Act since 2010,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) told reporters.
“And on behalf of the American people, we’re supposed to simply take their word that they’re willing to negotiate? The American people know that would be an unreasonable thing for us to do.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget ratcheted up the pressure on Democrats last week by directing federal agencies to consider mass firings under a shutdown, with the firings not reversed once funding is restored.
The budget office urged agencies to prioritise layoffs in any programme that is not funded by another law, such as the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill enacted in July, and that does not align with Trump’s priorities.
The GOP-backed law passed this northern summer “provided ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted”, OMB officials wrote in the memo. “Programmes that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown.”
The memo reflects months of tension between Congress and Trump’s budget office over spending powers.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) told reporters that the best way for Congress to retain its spending authority in this fight is to pass the funding extension and continue working on bipartisan appropriations bills.
“The power of the purse pretty clearly rests with Congress, as long as we do our job. And if we continue to do our job, then I don’t think they’ll have any undue influence,” he said.
Democrats say the threat of additional federal layoffs hasn’t broken their resolve, in part because they believe the Administration would seek to continue firing federal workers even if there was not a shutdown.
“If we’re going to pass a budget for the US Government, we need to save healthcare for millions of Americans, period. Why won’t Republicans take that deal? Won’t even negotiate over it,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said in an interview.
“This is a battle over values, and also a pretty clear dividing line between where Trump and the Republicans stand and where the Democrats are ready to hold the line and fight.”
Most federal agencies do not seem to have begun preparing for mass firings as directed. Over the past several days, shutdown-related communications to staff and meetings at multiple agencies - including the State Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency - have not included discussions of layoffs, according to records obtained by the Post and several employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
At one Interior Department meeting about the shutdown, said a staffer there, leadership began by declaring they could not discuss media reports about reductions in force.
The reticence did nothing to calm fears: “Employees are freaking out,” the staffer said. “Gravely distracted.”
Some publicly posted “contingency” plans for the shutdown make no mention of possible layoffs, including documents shared by the Labor Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.
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