1 of 4 | A sign announcing the closure of the Capitol Visitor Center is seen October 1. The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday evening on a stopgap measure to fund the federal government. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
The U.S. Senate is set to vote for the first time in five days on a new continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government as the country enters the 14th day of a federal shutdown Tuesday.
A notice from the office of House Republican Whip John Barrasso said a procedural vote on Republicans’ proposed funding bill would take place at 5:30 p.m., CBS News reported. The U.S. House passed the legislation Sept. 30, a day before the government shutdown went into effect, but the upper chamber has been deadlocked on the matter for weeks.
There’s no indication senators will hold a vote Tuesday on the Democrats’ competing bill.
Senators last voted on funding legislation on Thursday before heading into a long break coinciding with Monday’s bank holiday. With no action on the issue in several days, lawmakers in both chambers — and within the Trump administration — have used the time to trade criticisms over who’s to blame for the shutdown, which has left about 750,000 federal workers furloughed or working without pay.
In addition to furloughs, the Trump administration has begun carrying out mass firings, including 1,446 employees at the Justice Department and another 1,200 at the Department of Health and Human Services, USA Today reported.
The Trump administration said it’s working to make sure active-duty military service members receive their next paychecks Friday by repurposing about $8 billion Congress had appropriated for other areas of the Defense Department. President Donald Trump took to Truth Social over the weekend to announce he ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., held a news conference Tuesday morning at the Capitol and said Trump had “every right” to repurpose the funds.
“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it,” Johnson said.
Romina Boccia, the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, told The Hill on Monday that it is legal for Congress to repurpose unobligated funds, but for the administration to do so unilaterally “is likely illegal.”
“An unobligated balance does not give the administration the right to use the money as it wishes,” Boccia said. “If Congress wants to ensure that America’s troops will be paid during the ongoing government shutdown, Congress should pass a bill that authorizes funding to pay the troops.”
Doing so would require a vote by the House, which is on recess for the rest of the week. Johnson has said he will not call House members back to Washington, D.C., early.
At the heart of the deadlock are subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums set to expire in the new year.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, has said Senate Democrats wouldn’t support the stopgap legislation unless Republicans back extending the subsidies.
The Trump administration has said it’s against extending the ACA subsidies, falsely claiming undocumented immigrants are benefitting from it. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for health insurance under the ACA, the federal healthcare.gov website states.
