WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (The African Portal) – The U.S. government began shutting down early on Wednesday after President Donald Trump and lawmakers failed to reach a budget deal, triggering the first closure of federal agencies since 2019.
Operations at multiple departments and agencies halted at 12:01 a.m. (0401 GMT), leaving hundreds of thousands of workers facing furloughs. A last-minute Senate vote on a seven-week funding bill, already passed by the House of Representatives, fell short after Democrats demanded increased healthcare spending.
Almost all Senate Democrats opposed the stopgap measure, pressing for hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for Obamacare programmes, particularly for low-income households.
The shutdown comes nearly five years after the longest government closure in U.S. history, which lasted 35 days. The duration of the current shutdown remains uncertain.
Trump blamed Democrats for the deadlock and signaled he would use the closure to push spending cuts.
“So we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected. And they’re Democrats, they’re going to be Democrats,” Trump told reporters at the White House. He added that “a lot of good can come down from shutdowns” and suggested the pause could eliminate “a lot of things we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.”
Democrats rejected that argument, accusing Trump of forcing a shutdown to score political points.
“It is Trump and the Republican Party that are marching the country into a government shutdown over their refusal to strike a deal to save health care,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
