The US government appears headed towards its longest shutdown in record as Republicans continue to spar with Democrats over healthcare subsidies. The closure is now affecting the American Nuclear Security Agency — with 80% of its workforce slated for furlough as funds run out. Lawmakers have warned that the shift into “minimum-safe” mode could endanger critical safety operations.
“We were just informed last night that the National Nuclear Security Administration…the group that manages our nuclear stockpile…the carryover funding they’ve been using is about to run out. They will have to lay off 80% of their employees. These are not employees who you want going home. They’re managing and handling a very important strategic asset for us. They need to be at work and being paid…” House Armed Services Committee chair and Republican leader Mike Rogers said during a press conference on Friday.
The federal government employed nearly 2.3 million civilian employees as of March 31. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 750,000 of those employees would be furloughed each day during a shutdown — essentially ensuring that the did not report to work until the shutdown ended. Some lawmakers now predict that the ongoing shutdown could become the longest in US history — surpassing the 35 days during the first presidency of Donald Trump. The Trump administration is using the current shutdown to buttress priorities it favors while seeking to dismantle those it doesn’t.
Trump slams ‘Democrat shutdown’
US President Donald Trump on Friday called the federal shutdown as ‘democrat shutdown.’ He alleged that the democrats are preventing the influx of illegal immigrants to the US.
“The shutdown continues. The Republican Party is not going to pay a trillion and a half dollars to illegal immigrants coming into our country, coming in for a lot of reasons, coming in from prisons, from jails, from all over the place, from Venezuela, many countries. We’re not going to do that. So the shutdown continues. It’s a Democrat shutdown. It’s a Schumer shutdown because his career has failed, and it’s over,” he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
