Hundreds of flights, including several private jet services, have been cancelled, millions of federal workers have not received their salaries
NEW YORK — Hundreds of flights, including several private jet services, have been cancelled, millions of federal workers have not received their salaries, and millions of poor Americans are losing access to free or subsidised food.
That illustrates the crisis hitting the entire spectrum of US life because the Republican-Democrat standoff in the Senate over a resolution to temporarily fund the government is paralysing most government operations.
Only the most essential government operations are continuing. Many of those running them, like air traffic controllers, have not been paid. As a result, many are not coming to work. This led to the cancellation of about 1,000 flights on Saturday, after the government ordered a ten per cent reduction in flights at 40 major airports.
The Senate met on Saturday, the 39th day of the government shutdown, to break the impasse but failed again and is scheduled to meet again on Sunday for another unusual weekend sitting.
The regular budget, which should have been ready on October 1, marks the start of the US fiscal year. Instead, it is snaggled in party polarisation. A temporary measure known as a “continuing resolution” is needed to finance the government for now.
That resolution has been held up in the Senate due to a procedural element known as the filibuster, which blocks a legislative measure from coming up for a vote.
Sixty votes are required to break it, instead of a simple majority, as a way of putting the brakes on a party with a majority running roughshod.
The Republicans, with only 53 votes, are powerless to break the filibuster and pass their version of the temporary funding resolution.
US President Donald Trump has asked his party senators to end the filibuster rule, but they are reluctant, fearing that if the positions were reversed and the Democrats were in power, they would not have the tool to force compromises.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday, “The Democrats are cracking like dogs on the Shutdown because they are deathly afraid that I am making progress with the Republicans on TERMINATING THE FILIBUSTER”!
But Democrats were, in fact, standing firm Saturday night.
They have refused to end the filibuster unless the provisions for subsidies in Obamacare, as the health insurance programme enacted while former President Barack Obama was in office is called, that expire at the end of the year and cause hardship to those using it are extended.
"Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes healthcare affordability", Senate Democratic Party Leader Chuck Schumer said.
"Now the ball is in the Republicans' court", he said.
Senate Republican Party leader John Thune has refused to even discuss a compromise on Obamacare unless the Democrats end the standoff.
But the Democrats have made some concessions from their earlier demands, dropping some, like reversing the cuts Trump made to the government health insurance for the poor known as Medicaid.
The shutdown has been a double-edged sword for the Democrats. Trump blamed the shutdown his party’s defeats in this month’s elections to the shutdown, and while it may have helped the Democrats, the stopping of food programmes and the non-payment of salaries to federal workers is hitting their base, bringing some pressure on them.
The funding for the food programmes was allowed to continue by a lower federal court, but on Friday, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge appointed by former President Joe Biden and considered a progressive, gave a temporary decision striking it down and allowing Trump to withhold funds for the programmes.
Across the country, local voluntary organisations were reporting higher demands for donations, and the news media were awash with stories of people on the verge of going hungry.
Regarding Obamacare, which is holding up the temporary funding, Trump has proposed giving people directly the money to subsidise the programme and letting them make decisions instead of routing the money to “the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies”, as he put it.
But it won’t fly with the Democrats.
The shutdown is expected to have an impact on the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which gives legislators analyses, the shutdown may reduce the US economic growth between one per cent and two per cent in the last quarter of the year.