WASHINGTON — The government shutdown is now the second-longest in U.S. history, and Alabama’s two Republican senators are becoming more exasperated with the gridlock each day as federal workers are set to miss their paychecks Friday.
On Thursday, Senate Republicans changed course and put a bill on the floor to pay troops and federal workers who have been required to work during the shutdown. But with only three Democrats supporting it, it failed to reach the 60-vote threshold.
“They’re protecting our safety and security, they’re writing Social Security checks,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-WI, sponsor of the GOP bill, said on the Senate floor. “(We need) to see that they get their paycheck so they don’t have to work DoorDash, so they don’t have to go to food banks, so they’re not under that stress.”
Democrats offered up their own bills by voice vote that would pay all federal employees and prevent the Trump administration’s mass firings. Republicans rejected both of them.
“If you allow (the Trump administration) to decide who they’re going to keep on the job in the federal government and who they’re going to pay, you’re giving them also a blank check as to who they’re going to send home and who they’re going to punish by not paying,” Sen. Van Hollen, D-MD., a sponsor of one of the bills, said on the Senate floor.
After 24 days, the two parties do not appear any closer to breaking the impasse than they were when the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
“This is absolutely political theater,” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., told Alabama Daily News on a press call Wednesday, referring to the ongoing shutdown.
Federal employees will really start to feel the pinch of this stalemate Friday, as most workers will miss their full paychecks, and others are set to miss theirs next week, including air traffic controllers on Tuesday.
“I went to my 25-year reunion on Friday night, and there were several of my classmates who now live in Huntsville, and hearing their stories of going to work and not being paid or being furloughed, and when is that next check going to come? (It) was very real,” Britt said.
If the shutdown continues through the end of October, nearly 1.8 million civilian employees will not receive their paychecks, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Alabama is home to roughly 41,000 federal employees who will be impacted.
The political parties continue to play the blame game.
“The Democrats are hurting all Americans by not voting for this,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told reporters about the Republican-led short-term spending measure.
On the Senate floor, Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said “the shutdown is on Donald Trump’s back, and the American people know it.”
“They know that Republicans have the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and that the shutdown is on them.”
The Trump administration began firing federal employees during the funding lapse a couple of weeks ago, but a federal judge paused the mass firings last week.
Tuberville backed the administration’s plan to shrink the federal workforce, saying the one “good” thing that could come out of the shutdown is that “there’s going to be a lot of people that won’t be asked to come back, simply for the fact that taxpayers can’t afford to pay so many people up here.”
Democrats are adamant that a deal to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies needs to be reached before the government can reopen. But Republicans refuse to discuss the issue during the impasse.
“(Democrats) can’t say that you’re not going to be able to afford your health care, and also say some of these very same people can afford to go without a paycheck,” Britt told ADN.
Congress is running out of time to address the health care subsidies before open enrollment begins in about one week.
“Tens of millions of Americans are going to wake up to the reality because of the open enrollment period beginning on Nov.1 that their premiums, copays and deductibles are about to explode,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday.
In Alabama, some ACA marketplace premiums could increase by about 93% if the enhanced subsidies expire, according to KFF, a health research group. That could lead to an estimated 130,000 Alabamians losing coverage.
Democrats say they remain open and willing to discuss their health care priorities with Republicans, while the focus for GOP lawmakers remains on funding the government first.
Senators left Washington Thursday and are set to return Monday, guaranteeing the shutdown will last at least 27 days.