Ahead of a meeting between legislators and President Donald Trump, the Republican leaders of Congress sought yesterday to blame Democrats for an impasse prior to a looming deadline to pass legislation to avert a government shutdown and urged them to agree to a short-term bill to buy some time.
Without passage of funding legislation, parts of the government would close on Wednesday, the first day of the US government’s 2026 fiscal year.
Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but a temporary measure keeping the government open would have to amass at least 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate, meaning some Democratic votes would be needed.
Senate Democrats have rejected a short-term bill, demanding that any legislation undo recent Republican cuts to healthcare programmes.
The Republican president has summoned congressional leaders from both parties to a White House sitdown today to discuss funding legislation.
The Republican congressional leaders said they are eager to avert a shutdown.
Republican Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, called on Democrats to support a stopgap measure that would fund the government through November 21 while allowing appropriators to continue to hammer out spending bills.
“The only thing we are trying to do is buy a little time,” Johnson said on CNN’s State of the Union programme yesterday.
“We need a serious negotiation,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s leading Democrat, told NBC’s Meet the Press programme. “Now, if the president at this meeting is going to rant and just yell at Democrats and talk about all his alleged grievances and say this, that and the other thing, we won’t get anything done.”
The federal government is on the brink of its 15th partial shutdown since 1981 because legislators have failed to agree on a plan for discretionary funding – the money that is allocated through the annual congressional budgeting process – for the new fiscal year, or about one-quarter of the $7 trillion US budget.
If Congress does not act, thousands of federal government workers could be furloughed, from Nasa to the national parks, and a wide range of services would be disrupted.
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