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The federal government shut down after midnight last night. Capitol Hill is snarled by a partisan impasse, with no word as to which side might cave, work across the aisle, and try to garner the votes needed to pass a new spending bill. The last government shutdown was at the end of 2018during President Trump’s first term in officeand lasted into the early part of 2019. At 35 days, it was the longest shutdown in four decades. As for what caused this latest shutdown? In the simplest terms, a previously passed bill to fund the federal governments operations expired as of Wednesday, October 1. The House and Senate need to pass a new spending bill, which then needs to be signed by the president, to keep the federal government operating. That hasnt happened, and may not happen anytime soon. But while government shutdowns are not all that unusual, this shutdown is differentand for a simple reason: the Republican Party, which has majorities in both the House and Senate, as well as the White House, may have little or no motivation to reopen the government. ‘It’s very difficult to see what the exit strategy is’ Traditionally, politicians and elected officials have incentives to keep the government operating as smoothly as possible. This shows that theyre effective leaders, for one, and that they are capable of actually governing. If theyre unable to handle those basic aspects of their job descriptions as elected officials, conventional wisdom suggests that voters will make them pay for it at the ballot box. However, despite the prospect of electoral blowback, the majority party, in this case, appears to actually be relishing in the current circumstances. The administration has historically been motivated to minimize the harm to the public . . . and that was even true for the previous shutdown during the first Trump term, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, who has worked in all three branches of the federal government starting in the early 1980s. This time, the administration appears interested in using the shutdown to do extra damage to the government and the public, Stier adds. Its very difficult to see what the exit strategy ison one hand, you have an administration that wants to use the government to diminish the government, and the other side is motivated by an enraged base that wants them to make a stand. This is how [the Democrats] have chosen to do so. Since Trump took office early this year, he has presided over widespread spending cuts and reductions in government services. The shutdown, in some ways, actually works toward his administration’s goals of reducing the size and scope of the government. The president has even threatened mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown, something that goes way beyond the typical funding impasse rhetoric. And now that the government has in fact shut down, key services, far and wide, are either reduced or mothballed until a new spending bill is passed. Tens of thousands of government employees are or will be furloughed, laid off, or made to work without pay. The White House and its supporters in the GOP-controlled Congress appear unfazedat least for now. Democrats, conversely, are incentivized by their own voters, and those voters have been clamoring for the party to stop making concessions. In terms of specific sticking points, Democrats want Republicans to fund healthcare subsidies to reduce premium costs for millions of Americans, which Republicans have, so far, balked at. So negotiations have devolved into a partisan blame game, with both parties hoping that voters will blame the other side for the shutdown. For evidence of how much worse the rhetoric is this time around, visit the website of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), whose home page currently displays a bright-red banner denouncing the “Radical Left in Congress.” Screenshot via HUD.gov What the parties are saying about blame In a joint statement, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that after months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people. Democrats remain ready to find a bipartisan path forward to reopen the government in a way that lowers costs and addresses the Republican healthcare crisis. But we need a credible partner, the statement continued. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has cast the blame on Democrats, as reported by Fox News. We simply asked Democrats to extend existing funding levels to allow the Senate to continue the bipartisan appropriations work that we started, he said. “And Senate Democrats said no, he added. “Why? Because far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted a showdown with the president. And so, Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests. Senator Ted Cruz, another stalwart Republican, echoed Thune in a statement of his own. Senator Schumer and the Democrats have made it clear that they intend to shut down the federal government,” he said. “Their demands include taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens and a reversal of the Republican reforms blocking handouts to able-bodied adults who refuse to work.” As for whether the back-and-forth is making a meaningful impact, it remains to be seen. A poll, published on Tuesday by NPR/PBS News/Maris, showed that 38% of respondents blame Republicans for the shutdown, 27% blame Democrats, and 31% blame both. Whats next? Its difficult to predict what happens next. In all likelihood, itll depend on which side blinks first, and which side sees members signal their willingness to vote for a new funding bill. Reporting from Punchbowl News, published Wednesday morning, notes that three Democratic senators have agreed to vote for a Republican-backed stopgap funding bill. But five more would need to come on board to pass it, as it would need a total of 60 votes in the Senate. And then the House would need to pass it as well. While there may be movement in response to voter sentiment in the days ahead, in the more immediate term, the back-and-forth public blame game will likely continue. But experts like Stier expect the country is in for a lengthy shutdown. The American people, he says, will start to feel the effects as the shutdown drags on. In time, that could incentivize legislators to move toward a solution, even if it means ending up with egg on their face. Everybody gets hurt, and therell be some direct damage to people losing services, Stier says. I worry were not looking at a day-long shutdown, or even a lengthy one, like we had at the end of 2018. This could be much longer.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s administration said Wednesday it was putting a hold on roughly $18 billion to fund a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey and the city’s expanded Second Avenue subway project because of the government shutdown. The White House budget director, Russ Vought, said on a post on X that the step was taken due to the Republican administrations belief the money was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles. In a statement, the U.S. Transportation Department said that it had been reviewing whether any unconstitutional practices were occurring in the two massive infrastructure projects but that the government shutdown had forced it to furlough the staffers conducting the review. “This is another unfortunate casualty of radical Democrats reckless decision to hold the federal government hostage to give illegal immigrants benefits,” the statement reads. The suspension of funds is likely meant to target Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House is blaming for the shutdown. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Schumer said he and then-President Joe Biden were both giddy over the rail tunnel project, adding that it was all they talked about in the presidential limousine as they rode to the site. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, reacting to the development at a news conference about the federal government shutdown, told reporters, The bad news just keeps coming, adding that “theyre trying to make culture wars be the reason why. Thats what a partnership with Washington looks like as were standing here. Weve done our part. Were ready to build. Its underway, she said. And now we realize that theyve decided to put their own interpretation of proper culture ahead of our needs, the needs of a nation. The Hudson River rail tunnel is a long-delayed project whose path toward construction has been full of political and funding switchbacks. Its intended to ease the strain on a 110-year-old tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey. Hundreds of Amtrak and commuter trains carry hundreds of thousands of passengers per day through the tunnel, and delays can ripple up and down the East Coast between Boston and Washington The Second Avenue subway was first envisioned in the 1920s. The subway line along Manhattans Second Avenue was an on-again, off-again grail until the first section opened on Jan. 1, 2017. The state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working toward starting construction on the second phase of the line, which is to extend into East Harlem. Josh Boak, Associated Press Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
Category:
E-Commerce
Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summerthe median existing home went for $435,000 in JunePresident Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free. Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes. But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under Trumps proposals are those with the most valuable real estate. As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and economic inequality, I see this proposal as part of a familiar pattern: measures advertised as relief for ordinary families that mostly benefit the well-off. Most families already sell their homes tax-free Right now, according to the Internal Revenue Code, a single person pays no tax on the first $250,000 in gain from a home sale, while married people can exclude $500,000. All told, about 90% of home sales generate less than $500,000 in gains, so the overwhelming majority of sellers already owe no tax. The minority who would see new benefits from the proposed tax change are those with more than $500,000 in appreciation, typically owners of high-priced homes in hot real estate markets. Yales Budget Lab estimated the average benefit for these tax-free sales was $100,000 per qualifying seller. Homeownership itself isnt equally distributed across the U.S. population. About 44% of Black Americans are homeowners, compared with 74% of white Americans. That racial gap has only widened over the past 10 years. Similarly, single womenparticularly but not exclusively women of colorface additional barriers. A broader trend of upward wealth transference Though still just a proposal, the tax-free home sales bill is part of a broader set of Republican tax plans that would have regressive effectsthat is, where the vast majority of benefits go to high-income people and very few to low-income peopleunder a pro-worker banner. Trump floated the tax-free home sales idea less than three weeks after he signed a large package of tax and spending measures in July 2025. That bill generated strong public criticism because of its emphasis on tax savings for the rich at the expense of almost a trillion dollars in cuts for federally funded healthcare for the poor and disabled. The home sales idea follows the same scriptand echoes the distributional pattern established by his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That tax reform increased racial wealth and income disparities and provided 80% of its benefits to corporations and high-income individuals. In fact, my research shows that white households received more than twice as many tax cuts as Black households from that law. The same dynamic plays out in this new tax-fueled housing policy. Eliminating capital gains taxes on home sales would primarily benefit the 29 million homeowners who already have substantial equitya group that skews heavily white, male, and upper middle class. Meanwhile, Americas millions of renters, disproportionately people of color and women, would receive no benefit while potentially losing access to social programs Congress must cut to fund these tax breaks. Beverly Moran is a professor emerita of law at Vanderbilt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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