Shutdown Democrats hold firm as Republican anger grows

When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown last week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he were relishing his standoff with the Republicans. “Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News.

- By Chris Stein WASHINGTON

As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republicans believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an concessions on healthcare and other issues.

Outrage followed from Republicans, who printed out the Senate minority leader’s remark on posters and condemned it before press conferences. The shutdown has prompted federal agencies to close or curtail operations nationwide, and forced hundreds of thousands of employees to stay home without immediate pay. Schumer, Republicans argued, was being callous.

“This is beyond the pale,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said at a press conference last Friday morning, the 10th day of the shutdown. “What Chuck Schumer is doing right now, it’s sickening.”

Hours later, the White House took it upon itself to increase the misery for government employees when Russ Vought, the director of the office of management and budget, began following through on his threat to carry out layoffs. The budget office said that more than 4,000 federal workers were being fired from a variety of agencies, and the funding situation was “fluid and rapidly evolving”.