The federal government shutdown began soon after Democrats blocked legislation to continue to fund the government unless Trump and the Republicans agreed to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Without the extension, some Obamacare premiums will more than double on average. In response, Republicans refused the extension and used the excuse of the budget impasse to attack and cut government programs they already wanted to get rid of. Now, more people’s lives are trapped in this political game.
Ever since Trump took office, he has been threatening to reduce government spending and the federal workforce. Now the government shutdown is being used to implement some of the recommendations made by DOGE, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which aimed at cutting 300,000 federal jobs. Trump is threatening to permanently lay off more than 4,000 federal workers and furlough another 670,000, which will mean a collapse of many federal programs. The legality of the furloughs has been challenged in the courts, and the courts ruled to block the layoffs. But in the meantime, many federal workers are working without pay, and their union is demanding that the Democrats drop their opposition and end the shutdown.
In the past, federal workers would continue to work and be paid at the end of a shutdown. Trump has threatened that the furloughed workers will not receive back pay for their work. As a result, some federal workers are no longer going to work.
The shutdown and cuts are having countless effects, from airline delays due a lack of air traffic controllers, to longer wait times or no access for those applying for government services. There are also delays for processing disaster relief funds and greatly reduced weather forecasting services, while part of the country is enduring hurricane season. The lack of federal funding is having disastrous effects on already strapped state and local governments’ budgets, causing services to be reduced or eliminated, including programs like Head Start.
The Trump administration’s threat to cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food stamp program relied on by 42 million people (one-eighth of the US population) as a regular source of essential food, is appalling. They are literally taking the food out of the mouths of babies with the cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which seven million pregnant women or those with young children rely on. The threatened cuts have been halted by the courts. They also ruled that the government could not claim that it was illegal to use the $5 billion emergency contingency fund to continue to provide food to tens of millions of vulnerable people. It is an emergency. Claiming otherwise is not only absurd but criminal!
These vicious attacks on the welfare of working people come on top of horrific cuts already enacted this year. To increase the profits of the fossil fuel industry, they eliminated proposed workplace regulations that would cut silica pollution in coal mines that result in Black Lung Disease that has crippled and killed tens of thousands of coal miners. They have moved to eliminate collective bargaining rights from more than one million federal workers. They scrapped the minimum wage requirement that federal contractors pay their employees at least $17.75 an hour; as a result, many full-time workers will see their wages fall by more than $9,200 a year.
Trump also recently increased the ICE budget, which more and more functions like his private military force. With a budget of $170 billion, ICE is now the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S. and more highly funded than most nations’ military budgets! His administration has sent thousands of those armed troops, along with the National Guard, into our cities and towns to attack and arrest immigrants and their families. Could it be any clearer where the Republicans stand and whose interests they defend?
And the Democrats? All they can offer as an alternative is the hope that the shutdown will be blamed on the Republicans and help them win in the upcoming elections. Our hopes certainly don’t lie with them!
What more proof do we need? This is not a government of, for, and by the people. It is a government of, by, and for the billionaires.
