The United States entered a budget blockade situation this morning, the so-called shutdown, when the government budget officially expired at midnight local time (6:00 Central European Time), which means the cessation of activities of part of the federal administration.
Hundreds of thousands of civil servants will become technically unemployed and major disruptions are expected for users of public services while awaiting a resolution to the current impasse in Congress between President Donald Trump's Republicans and opposition Democrats.
The government shutdown occurred after the Senate, the upper house of the US Congress, failed to pass a funding bill, the BBC reports.
It is the first government shutdown since 2018-2019 and could lead to a temporary shutdown of some government services, but not all.
US President Trump is threatening mass layoffs of workers in federal agencies affected by the shutdown.
So-called essential workers will continue to work as usual, some without pay, but other civil servants are now on unpaid leave.
This situation, which last occurred seven years ago, is very unpopular in the US, with both sides already accusing each other of being responsible.
Trump said yesterday afternoon that Democrats want to shut everything down, not Republicans, and then took a barely veiled threatening tone, saying that this could get rid of a lot of unwanted things, and that they would be Democratic things.
This, according to Agence France-Presse, is an allusion to his intention to use the freeze on some federal services to implement the layoffs of thousands of federal employees, which has already begun to be done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE), led by his former ally Elon Musk.
On the other hand, Democrats accuse Republicans of having no will to negotiate.
Trump is no stranger to "shutdown" situations, as the last one was during his first term when the paralysis lasted from December 2018 to January 2019, a record 35 days.
After the failed budget bill last night, White House Budget Office Director Russell Votel instructed federal agencies to implement an orderly shutdown plan.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 750.000 federal employees will be placed in a position of technical unemployment.
Air traffic could be affected, and the payment of certain social benefits could be severely disrupted.
According to calculations by the insurance company Nationwide, each week of paralysis could reduce America's annual economic growth by 0,2 percentage points.
Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress, but according to Senate regulations, a budget proposal must be passed with 60 votes out of 100, which, according to the current composition of that chamber, requires at least seven Democratic votes.
For now, Republicans are proposing to extend the current budget until the end of November and stress that there is no other proposal on the table. On the other hand, Democrats want to restore hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending, especially the Obamacare healthcare program for households that was repealed by the Donald Trump administration.
In March, when a government shutdown was already looming, Republicans were reluctant to begin a dialogue on the massive budget cuts decided by the Trump administration. Ten Democratic senators, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, reluctantly voted for the Republican version of the bill to avoid federal paralysis.
Their decision caused great turmoil among Democrats, and many activists and supporters accused them of bowing to Donald Trump and his program, which was considered radical.
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