By: Laila Hicks
On October 1st, 2025, The Government shut down. The reason for this shutdown is because Republicans and Democrats “failed to resolve a budget dispute.” BBC states. “It means that some, but not all, US government services are temporarily suspended, and 40% of the federal workforce – about 750,000 people – are expected to be put on unpaid leave.”
The government ran out of time deciding on funding, this failure to decide on the funding is what caused the shutdown. The shutdown will last until further notice but for now we know the minimum time the shut down will last is until next week. Speaker – Mike Johnson, NBC News, states. “The House will come back into session and do its work as soon as [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government.”
Each agency has its own plan for a government shutdown, and during government shutdowns, employees must continue to work whenever without pay. Not all employees will not get pay though. The only people that will not be receiving pay are federal employees, and the people that are still getting pay include, The President and members of Congress, U.S Postal Service employees, People of Mandatory Spending Programs, and many more.
According to the White House, President Trump has claimed that the administration will start “Mass layoffs” on federal workers if the Democratic attempt to end a partial government shutdown makes no progress.
CNN News has put out an article about this, and has stated that, Democratic senators say they’re ready for “real negotiation” on health care policy and a bill to fund the government, accusing Republicans of following President Donald Trump’s lead and trolling Democrats rather than working on a compromise. This is because the Republican party has not done anything serious, really tried to put a stop to the health care policies, or try to negotiate with them.
On October 6th 2025, the Senate will be voting. This vote is on the Republican short term funding bill. This bill would keep the government’s spending at its current state. Although many claim that this vote will most likely fail again, as no Democrats have claimed to support this bill.
Republican leaders have now gone back to a strategy that they have used many times. They are making false claims about undocumented immigrants. This is to try and focus the debate on a more, “favorable terrain” when they should really be focussing on the health care policies and getting the government back up. According to CNN, The Republican leaders have been consistently arguing that Democrats are making an attempt to provide healthcare to these undocumented immigrants.
On Friday, October 3rd, the Senate had another vote to try and get the government back up, but had failed again. USA TODAY, has put out an article where Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota states, “I don’t know how many times we’re going to give them a chance to vote no, hopefully over the weekend they’ll have a chance to think about it.” Although Democrats want negotiations to “restore subsidies” for all of the lower income families to have the opportunity to get health insurance, and while Republicans are open to talk about it, they are refusing to do so while the government is still shut down, and as of now, we still don’t know when it will be back up.
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