United States Federal Government shuts down after Senate fails to pass funding plans.

Oct 2025 : As of now 12 Hours 10 Minutes (IST), the United States Federal Government has shut down for almost 03 Hours, after the official deadline was over. The Shut Down officially commenced at 08:30 Hours of Indian Standard Time on 01^st October, 2025.

A weekslong stalemate between Republicans and Democrats over enhanced Obamacare subsidies has turned into the first government shutdown since 2019. Leaders of both parties are privately and publicly adamant that they will not be blamed for the funding lapse. Republicans insist Democrats need to simply agree to extend current funding for another seven weeks. But Democrats refuse to do so without major concessions for lending their votes to pass any funding measure in the Senate.

Senators left the Capitol on Tuesday night in a state of deep uncertainty about how long the shutdown could last. The Senate is on track to vote again late Wednesday morning on the same GOP funding plan, which Republican leaders have vowed to put on the floor day after day until enough Democrats yield and agree to reopen the government. But many Democrats have declared publicly they will not relent, even as President Donald Trump and his budget office have ramped up threats to use the shutdown to further shrink the size of government, and in some cases permanently.

“It’s going to be very harmful for working people”, a visibly exasperated GOP Senator Josh Hawley told Media Houses moments after Democrats blocked the bill. “I don’t know how it ends. They don’t know how it ends,” he said. “You’re asking millions of people to pay a really high price”.

In the Democratic party, the pressure is now on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to keep more of his members from yielding to the GOP pressure campaign to support their seven-week funding bill and agree to negotiate later on the Obamacare subsidies. That task will become tougher with every day of a shutdown, particularly as Trump has threatened to cancel programs favoured by Democrats. Inside the party, there’s growing concern about the damage that the White House budget office could cause across the country that can’t be easily reversed by Congress.

Asked if he’s concerned that the White House could do permanent damage to the government, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asserted the Media Houses: “Of course, who wouldn’t be? We have a madman in charge”. He said Democrats now need to “make sure that Trump is held responsible for all of that, pays the price for it”.

In a recent development: Two more members flipped their positions to back the GOP bill on Tuesday night in the final vote before a shutdown: Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Senator Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats. Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania also backed the GOP bill and has criticised his party’s strategy during the shutdown fight.

At least two other Democrats appeared to be seriously contemplating their vote on the floor Tuesday — which Republicans took as another sign of weakening in the Democratic party’s stance. Senior Democrats had long conversations with Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Senator Maggie Hassan, both of New Hampshire, on the floor before they ultimately voted with Schumer and the rest of their party. After Shaheen cast her vote, she went straight to Senate Republican Leader John Thune and spoke with him privately for several minutes.

Asked later about what appeared to be extensive lobbying ahead of her vote: Shaheen told reporters: “No, I was just having conversations with other people who are thinking long and hard about how we move forward”. She added that she ultimately decided to vote against the bill to force Republicans into talks on ACA subsidies: “I thought getting this done so that we can now hopefully get back to the negotiating table was the best approach”.

The hyped premium subsidies, which were first approved as part of a Biden administration Covid-19 rescue package in 2021 and later extended, make Obamacare coverage more affordable for lower-income Americans and enable more middle class households to qualify for assistance. They managed a record 24 million people to sign up for policies for 2025. If the enhanced subsidies are allowed to lapse at year’s end, premiums are expected to skyrocket by 75%, on average, for 2026, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders insisted there are other Democrats who are anxious about a shutdown and want to find an off-ramp to the looming crisis. “There are Democrats who are very unhappy”, Thune told reporters on Tuesday night (30th September, 2025), adding that he is “having conversations” with some Democrats that he declined to name. “There are others out there I think who don’t want to shut down the government but are being put in a position by their leadership that ought to make all of them very uncomfortable. Tonight, is evidence, there is some movement there”.

Schumer, however, was adamant that the American people would see Republicans as causing the shutdown, and not his own party because of the looming health care cliff: “At midnight, the American people will blame them for bringing the government to a halt. Our guarantee to the American people. We’re going to fight as hard as we can for their health care, plain and simple”, Schumer said, when pressed about the GOP’s plan to put up the same funding plan again and again until enough Democrats yield.

Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii was hopeful but also doubtful pressure to cut a deal will build on Republicans from their own constituents who will face higher health care costs when their enhanced subsidies expire at the end of this year. “Let’s hope that they come around to the fact that they’re hurting a lot of their own constituents by not negotiating on the health care issue. But you never know, because they apparently don’t care”.

GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is considered to be a potential dealmaker on any ACA subsidies deal informed reporters that she believes there still is room to negotiate on health care. “I think we do have to talk about the impending cliff that we’re looking at with the premium tax credits. What that’s going to look like, I think, is absolutely a subject of discussion. I hope that people who are interested in seeing this shutdown come to a quick end are willing to talk about ways that we might be able to accomplish that”.

The shutting of the federal government means that hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed, while others who are considered essential will have to keep reporting for work – though many won’t get paid until the impasse ends. Still others, however, will continue collecting pay checks since their jobs are not funded through annual appropriations from Congress.

Team Maverick