![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AP25276675861834-1759524927.jpg\")
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson walks through the Capitol on October 3 [J Scott Applewhite\/AP Photo]Finger-pointing on Capitol Hill<\/p>\n\u201c\u200aWell, the shutdown melodrama continues.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how, with the verbal equivalent of a sigh, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana summed up the third day of the United States government shutdown.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
On Friday, the US Senate reconvened before a weekend recess to vote yet again on a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through November 21.<\/p>\n
Republicans have touted the resolution as a \u201cclean\u201d budget bill, maintaining the status quo. But Democrats have said they will refuse to consider any bill that does not consider healthcare spending.<\/p>\n
By the end of the year, subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are slated to expire, a fact expected to cause insurance premiums to spike for many Americans. And Democrats have called on Republicans to reconsider cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance programme for low-income households, following the passage of a bill earlier this year that narrows its requirements.<\/p>\n
But the result has been an impasse on Capitol Hill, with both parties exchanging blame and no resolution in sight. Frustration was visible on both sides.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shutdown is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid,\u201d Kennedy said from the Senate floor.<\/p>\n
For a fourth time on Friday, Democrats rejected the Republicans\u2019 proposal, which previously passed the House of Representatives along party lines.<\/p>\n
Only three senators splintered from the party caucus: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Independent Angus King of Maine.<\/p>\n
On the Republican side, Senator Rand Paul also refused to vote alongside members of his party. His concern, he said, was how the spending would contribute to federal debt.<\/p>\n
The result was a vote of 54 to 44 in the 100-seat Senate chamber, far short of the 60 votes Republicans need to overcome a Democratic filibuster to scuttle the bill.<\/p>\n
As a counterproposal, Democrats put forward a bill that would see more than $1 trillion dedicated to healthcare spending. But that too floundered in a Senate vote.<\/p>\n
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson walks through the Capitol on October 3 [J Scott Applewhite\/AP Photo]Finger-pointing on Capitol Hill<\/p>\n
In a news conference afterwards, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the deadlock could only be broken if the Republicans changed their tactic and negotiated on the question of healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we saw the Republicans run the same play, and they got the same result. The question is: Will they change course?\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Schumer accused Republicans of having \u201cwasted a week\u201d with four votes that ended in the same result.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aMy caucus and Democrats are adamant that we must protect the healthcare of the American people,\u201d he said. \u201c\u200aInstead of trying to come to the table and negotiate with Democrats and reopen the government, the White House and fellow Republicans have vowed to make this a \u2018maximum pain\u2019 shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican leaders, meanwhile, accused the Democrats of attempting to bog down the process instead of proceeding with the status quo.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Mike Johnson also argued that programmes like Medicaid were in desperate need of reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedicaid has been rife with fraud and abuse, and so we reformed it. Why? To help provide more and better health services for the American people,\u201d he said at a news conference. \u201c\u200aWe had so many people on Medicaid that never were intended to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson accused Schumer of attempting to appeal to the progressive branch of the Democratic Party, in anticipation of a 2028 primary for his Senate seat: \u201c\u200aHe\u2019s got to show that he\u2019s fighting Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both sides of the aisle, however, expressed sympathy for the federal workers caught in the middle of the shutdown.<\/p>\n
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that nearly 750,000 people are facing furloughs each day the shutdown continues. Others are required to keep working without pay.<\/p>\n
The total compensation for the furloughed employees amounts to roughly $400m per day, according to the budget office\u2019s statistics. Thanks to a 2019 law, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, federal employees will eventually receive backpay \u2013 but only after the shutdown concludes.<\/p>\n
Pressure tactics<\/p>\n
In an effort to force the Democrats to pass the continuing resolution, Johnson issued a notice on Friday afternoon that the House of Representatives would not return to session until October 14 at the earliest.<\/p>\n
Instead, his memo called on representatives to engage in a \u201cdistrict work period\u201d, away from the US capital.<\/p>\n
That announcement was designed to place pressure on the Senate to act on the continuing resolution the House had already passed. Prior to Johnson\u2019s announcement, the House had been expected to resume its work in the Capitol on October 7.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, John Thune, the Senate majority leader, indicated he would be willing to weigh the Democrats\u2019 concerns about healthcare, but only once the government was reopened.<\/p>\n
Still, he made no guarantee that the expiring healthcare subsidies would be re-upped if the Democrats did relent.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aWe can\u2019t make commitments or promises on the COVID subsidies because that\u2019s not something that we can guarantee that there are the votes there to do. But what I\u2019ve said is I\u2019m open to having conversations with our Democrat colleagues about how to address that issue,\u201d Thune said.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aBut that can\u2019t happen while the government is shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to use the shutdown as an opportunity to slash the federal workforce and cut programmes that benefit Democratic strongholds.<\/p>\n
Already this week, his administration has said it is suspending $18bn in New York City infrastructure projects, including for tunnels under the Hudson River, as well as about $8bn in clean energy initiatives.<\/p>\n
But on Friday, Russ Vought, Trump\u2019s director for the US Office of Management and Budget, announced another major city would be targeted for cuts: Chicago, Illinois.<\/p>\n
Vought posted on social media that two Chicago infrastructure projects, worth $2.1bn, \u201chave been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting\u201d.<\/p>\n
At a news briefing afterwards, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said a reduction in the federal workforce was also in the works, with Vought meeting with agency leaders to discuss layoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe if Democrats do the right thing, this government shutdown can be over. Our troops can get paid again. We can go back to doing the business of the American people,\u201d Leavitt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if this shutdown continues, as we\u2019ve said, layoffs are an unfortunate consequence of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Democratic leaders dismissed those threats as pressure tactics meant to distract from the key question of healthcare.<\/p>\n
In his remarks, Schumer\u00a0argued that healthcare was a top priority for Republican districts too, and that Republican leaders should respond accordingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s simple,\u201d Schumer said. \u201c\u200aThey can reopen the government and make people\u2019s healthcare more affordable at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201c\u200aWell, the shutdown melodrama continues.\u201d That\u2019s how, with the verbal equivalent of a sigh, Senator John Kennedy of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,101,2420,3,111,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-200644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-us-canada","20":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}