Source: Cailian
News of the 13th of October (editor 刘蕊)With the U.S. government shutdown entering its 12th day on Sunday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Wans said the longer the shutdown would last, the greater the federal government's cuts would be.
This undoubtedly creates greater uncertainty for the hundreds of thousands of employees who are already on unpaid leave, and at the moment, both parties in Congress are still rigid on budget issues, and there seems to be no hope of breaking up the impasse in the short term.
The U.S. federal government will lay off further employees
The U.S. government shutdown began on October 1st, and the shutdown has entered its 12th day. Hundreds of thousands of government workers have been temporarily suspended in recent days.
JD Wans warned that they would take new cuts, which would be “painful”, but he said at the same time that the Trump administration is working to ensure the military gets paid this week, and that some services will be reserved for low-income Americans, including food aid.
In a court document on Friday, the U.S. Administration and Budget Office said more than 4,000 federal employees would soon be fired as the shutdown continued.
The impact of the shutdown further intensified on Sunday when the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum and educational research complex funded by the U.S. government, announced that its museums, research centers and national zoos would temporarily close due to lack of funding.
Thousands of employees at agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education, Treasury, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency will receive layoff notices, according to spokespersons for relevant U.S. departments and union representatives of federal workers.
"The longer this continues, the greater the cuts will be."Wans said in the show, "It needs to be clear that some of these cuts will have a painful effect.This is not the situation we are pleased with, nor is it what we expect to happen, but the Democrats have played us such a fairly tough card."
At present, the U.S. federal government union has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the radical layoffs taken by President Trump's budget office.
Both sides are unwilling to compromise.
At present, the two parties in the US Congress are still in a stalemate on the budget issue. Previously, Democrats rejected a short-term funding settlement and demanded that the bill contain an extension of the federal Medicare subsidy under the Affordable Care Act. After these subsidies expire at the end of the year, they will lead to increased monthly costs for millions of people.
Trump and Republican leaders have said they are willing to negotiate on medical subsidies, but stressed that the government must reopen the door first.
Currently, negotiations between the two parties have almost completely stopped. House leaders of both parties remained firm as always, pointing fingers at each other on Sunday's television show.
“We’ve made it clear many times that we’ll sit down and negotiate with anyone, anytime, anywhere,” said New York House Democratic Leader Hachim Jeffries, “the Republicans control the House, Senate, and presidential positions.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, on the other hand, blamed the Democrats and said they "seemingly don't care" about the pain caused by the government shutdown.
He said: "They are doing their best to distract the attention of the American people to cover up the fact that they have fallen into a partisan dispute."
(Liu Rui, Financial Associated Press)