The US government shutdown appeared set to stretch into its seventh week, with no signs yet emerging on Friday that congressional Democrats had budged from their demands to restart funding despite consistent pressure from Republicans.
The 38-day shutdown began on the first of October and is already the longest in US history, causing unprecedented disruptions to government programs.
Donald Trump’s White House attempted to pause payments under the government’s food aid program for the first time in history, but has been blocked by a court order. The Federal Aviation Administration also slashed commercial air travel, saying weeks of unpaid work by controllers had undermined capacity. About 800 US-linked flights had been canceled as of Friday morning, according to the tracking website FlightAware.
Though Republicans control both chambers of Congress, any spending legislation needs at least some bipartisan support to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, has tried 14 times to get Democrats to support a House-approved bill to continue funding through 21 November, but so far only three minority lawmakers have voted for it.
Thune planned to hold 15th vote on Friday. He told Fox News that “we’re going to give them a chance to vote later today on paying people who are working”, but did not say if he was referring to a bill to reopen the government, or to pay some of the federal workers who had stayed on the job without pay over the past weeks.
Democrats are insisting that any funding bill include an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for enrollees of Affordable Care Act health plans. The credits, which were enacted during Joe Biden’s presidency, expire at the end of the year, and people on those plans are expected to soon see their costs jump by an average of 26%, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters at the White House that he expected the shutdown to cut GDP growth by approximately half in the current quarter, though much of that will be made up in the following quarter, assuming the shutdown ends and federal workers receive backpay.
Trump has publicly mulled not giving federal workers, many of whom his administration has maligned, pay for the time the government was shut down.
Democrats’ resolve to hold strong against the Republican funding proposal was boosted on Tuesday when the party’s candidates swept off-year elections in a number of states, which party leaders attributed to voters being on board with their demands.
“Americans plagued by high costs fired a political torpedo this week at Donald Trump and Republicans,” the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said on Thursday.
“If Republicans were smart, they would get the message after Tuesday that their do-nothing strategy isn’t working. Even Donald Trump knows Americans hold Republicans responsible for this mess.”
Recent polls have shown the GOP taking more of the blame for the shutdown than Democrats, and some in the party have warned that backing down from their demands now would turn off newly reenergized voters.
“I think there will be some pretty substantial damage done to a Democratic brand that has been rehabilitated, if, on the heels of an election in which the people told us to keep fighting, we immediately stop fighting, if we surrender without having gotten anything,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy told Punchbowl News.
Trump appeared to acknowledge that dynamic, telling senators from his party on Wednesday that the shutdown was “negative for Republicans”.
He has called for them to vote for scrapping the Senate’s filibuster, which allows the minority party to hold up most legislation that does not receive 60 votes. “If Republicans kill the Filibuster, they sail to Victory for many years to come. If they don’t, DISASTER waiting to happen!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.
Thune has said his lawmakers do not support doing that.
