The United States is barrelling towards a government shutdown as the meeting between President Donald Trump and Democratic leadership failed to achieve any breakthrough.
If no deal is achieved between Republicans and Democrats by Tuesday at midnight, funding for the US government will be cut, and several federal services will come to a halt.
After meeting Trump in the White House, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, “laid out to the president some of the consequences of what’s happening in health care, and by his face, he looked like he heard about them for the first time.”
He added that they “have very large differences on health care.”
Democrats are demanding to reverse the Medicaid cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill” which was passed earlier this year.
Vice-President JD Vance, addressing the media at the White House, indicated that a shutdown could be imminent.
“I think we’re headed into a shutdown because Democrats won’t do the right thing. I hope they change their mind, but we’re going to see,” Vance said.
Republicans assert they would not agree to Democrats’ demands and have proposed to extend funding until November 21.
While the Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, they are seven votes short in the Senate as the funding bill requires 60 votes to pass.
It would be the first US government shutdown in seven years, as the last one happened under Trump 1.0 in 2018 and lasted for 35 days – the longest in history.
The Trump administration has threatened to fire more federal workers during the government shutdown period.
Essential services such as border protection, law enforcement, and air-traffic control would continue to function while food assistance programmes, government-funded pre-school, food inspectors and operations at national parks could be adversely affected.
If the shutdown is extended over a long period, air travel could face challenges as many of those workers would be forced to work without pay and may not report for duty.
