US government shutdown day three: Republicans and Democrats make little progress on deal

The US government remained shut down for a third straight day on Friday, with no signs that congressional lawmakers had made progress on reaching an agreement to restart operations.

The Senate will convene in the afternoon to vote on dueling Republican and Democratic proposals for continuing funding over the coming weeks, but neither bill appears to have the support to clear the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for advancement. The shutdown is the first since 2019, and if the votes fail, it will ensure that federal departments remained closed and workers furloughed into next week.

Funding lapsed after midnight Wednesday when Senate Democrats refused to provide the votes necessary to pass a Republican funding bill, and demanded concessions on healthcare and other spending priorities.

Donald Trump and the Republican leaders of Congress have balked, and on Friday, the labor department did not release its monthly data on job creation and unemployment, citing the shutdown. The White House continued its streak of cancelling funding for projects in Democratic-led areas, with office of management and budget director Russell Vought announcing $2.1bn for two transit infrastructure projects in Chicago had been put on hold “to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting”.

Democrats want any spending bill to include a reversal of cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for low-income and disabled Americans, which Republicans approved earlier this year, as well as an extension of premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act plans. Healthcare costs are expected to rise for about 20 million people if the credits are not extended, while about 10 million people may lose health insurance due to the cuts to Medicaid and similar programs.

Democrats also want money cut from public media restored, and Trump’s “pocket rescission” of foreign aid funds stopped, arguing that it undermines Congress’s power of the purse.

John Thune, the Senate majority leader, has ruled out bargaining over those terms until government funding is restored, and in an interview with NBC News Thursday, indicated he was not negotiating with his Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer. “Our offices are not far apart, so if he wants to chat, he knows where to find me. But I think at this point right now, the issue set is pretty straightforward. I don’t know that … negotiation is going to accomplish a lot.”

His comments echoed those of Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, who said “I quite literally have nothing to negotiate” with the Democrats.

The minority party has shown no sign of changing its position. “Democrats are very clear. We want to reopen it. We stand by hardworking federal civil servants. We want to find a bipartisan path forward. But it’s got to be an agreement that actually meets the needs of the American people,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told MSNBC.

It remains to be seen if enough Democratic senators will continue supporting the party’s position. Three Democrats have voted to advance the Republican funding bill, a division in the party that GOP leaders have said they will try to exploit.

Trump has sought to make the stakes of this shutdown unusually high. In addition to slashing funding in a way he has described as intended to punish Democrats, he has threatened to conduct mass layoffs of federal workers.

Several government departments have posted partisan and potentially illegal messages saying their operations are curtailed due to “the Radical Left Democrat shutdown”. Sources at the education department say their out-of-office email messages were changed without their permission to use rhetoric blaming Democrats.