US Senators have for a fourth time failed to pass spending proposals to reopen the federal government, extending the ongoing shutdown into next week.
Two separate spending proposals – one from the Democrats and one from Republicans – failed to reach the required 60-vote threshold.
With both sides deadlocked, the White House on Friday said it would be left with the “unenviable task” of mass lay-offs to keep essential government services operating if the shutdown continues, which Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described as “fiscal sanity”.
The scope of those potential lay-offs remain unclear but the White House has been in discussions with the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have dug in their heels on the main point of disagreement: healthcare. Democrats have hoped to capitalise on the impasse to ensure health insurance subsidies for those with low-income do not expire and reverse the Trump administration’s cuts to the Medicaid health programme.
Republicans, for their part, have repeatedly accused Democrats of shutting down the government in a bid to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants – a charge that Democratic leaders have denied.
A total of 54 Senators voted in favour of a Republican-led proposal to fund the government, with 44 against and two not voting.
A separate, Democrat-led proposal also failed, with 45 voting in favour and 52 against.
Both sides have continued to blame the other for the shutdown, with little sign of any progress in negotiations.
“We can vote and vote and vote,” Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley told the BBC. “But it’s up to basically five people.”
During a news briefing at the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of holding Americans “hostage over their demands”.
“The economic consequences of this shut down are piling up every day,” she added, noting that $15bn (£11.1bn) in GDP could be lost each week as unemployment rises.
White House officials have repeatedly vowed to lay off federal workers if the shutdown continues, and earlier this week President Donald Trump posted that he would meet with Russell Vought, who heads OMB, to examine “which of the many Democrat agencies” that should be cut.
The White House has provided no scope or timeline for any potential lay-offs or cuts to agencies. Leavitt said that most of those cuts would come from agencies that “do not align with this administration’s values of putting our country first”.
As part of the federal government’s response to the shut down, Vought on Friday announced the suspension of $2.1bn in federal infrastructure funding for Chicago, in addition to the previous freezing of $18bn in infrastructure spending in New York City and the cancellation of approximately $8bn in funding for federal energy projects in some Democratic-run states.
On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats are fighting the healthcare issue because “we know Americans want this”.
“And we know many of my Republican colleagues want this as well,” he said. “But failure to act would be devastating, and Republicans know it.”
Some Democrats – including Connecticut Senator Richard Bluementhal and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman – said they want to hear directly from the president about the ongoing stalemate.
Citing a bipartisan border bill that the president ultimately rejected last year, they said they fear that any negotiations with Senate Republicans could ultimately be contradicted by Trump.
Early polls have suggested that Americans are deeply split on the shutdown, with one Washington Post poll conducted on 1 October finding that 47% of US adults blame Republicans, compared to 30% who blame Democrats.
Another 23% said they were unsure.
(With additional reporting from Cai Pigliucci on Capitol Hill)
