Federal agencies halt operations as Congress deadlocks over ACA subsidies and spending bill.
Jonathan Roman | Staff Writer
The United States federal government has been shut down for two weeks after Congress failed to pass a funding bill on October 1. Each year, Congress must pass a spending bill to allocate funds to federal agencies and programs. When Congress fails to do so, those agencies and programs lose the authority to spend money or pay their employees. The longest shutdown was 35 days during Trump’s first term in office. Costing the country $3 billion in economic losses.
Today, Congress remains at a stalemate, with neither Democratic nor Republican leaders willing to return to the negotiating table. Democrats want an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. Currently, millions of Americans are enrolled in the ACA, and 22.4 million rely on subsidies to receive coverage. Republicans prefer to pass a “clean spending bill” with no attachments or expansion in healthcare. A recent KFF poll found that 78% of U.S. Adults support extending the ACA subsidies.
Currently, federal agencies and programs that are “nonessential” have stopped spending money, and millions of federal workers are set to miss paychecks on Wednesday, October 15. U.S. troops were initially set to go without paychecks; however, President Trump has directed the Pentagon to use “all available funds” to pay U.S troops. According to officials at the Pentagon, the funds to pay the troops will come from $8 billion in unobligated research and development money that the department has identified.
The effects of the shutdown are hitting airports nationwide. San Francisco International Airport delayed nearly half of all its flights with several cancellations. Burbank Airport reported the air traffic control tower was unmanned for six hours due to staffing shortages. Over 50,000 TSA agents and 13,000 air traffic controllers are working without pay. Adding to the strain, the Federal Aviation Administration has furloughed over 11,000 employees.
As previously signaled, the White House Budget Office has begun laying off furloughed government workers. Russ Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a X post, “The RIFs have begun.” 4,200 employees have been laid off since Friday, October 10. One of the affected agencies is the Department of Education. It laid off 466 workers after firing employees earlier this year. The layoffs have left the DOE with only 20% of its remaining staff. Among those affected was the Office of Special Education Programs, previously staffed by between 80-90 employees; now fewer than 5 employees remain. This office, which plays a crucial role in the DOE, is tasked with ensuring rights and services for students with disabilities across the country.
A brewing legal battle has begun as a federal judge blocked the White House from future layoffs. Judge Susan Yvonne Illston criticized the Administration over the lay-offs. “You can’t do this in a nation of laws.” Adding that the Trump administration has “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like.”
On October 14, the Senate held a vote to pass the Republican-backed funding bill, which failed for the eighth time. Congressional leaders remain divided, while the White House budget office says it plans to “ride out” the shutdown. With no end in sight, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson warned that this shutdown could become the longest in
U.S. history says, “We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history.”
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