In 2013, then-businessman and actuality TV star Donald Trump shared his imaginative and prescient on Fox Information concerning the position a United States president ought to play in a authorities shutdown: “You must be good and be offended and be wild and cajole and do all types of issues, however it’s a must to get a deal.”
Now, as president, Trump has taken a special strategy. After failing to succeed in a bipartisan settlement, he mocked Democrats by posting an expletive-laced video generated by synthetic intelligence and set to mariachi music, falsely exhibiting US Consultant Hakeem Jeffries carrying a sombrero and US Senator Chuck Schumer saying that “no one likes Democrats any extra”, so the occasion is in search of favour with “unlawful aliens”.
Advisable Tales
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Welcome to the 2025 US government shutdown.
At PolitiFact, we’ve got fact-checked lawmakers’ and pundits’ statements about authorities shutdowns for greater than a decade. When Congress can’t attain a funding settlement, each side of the political aisle whip up speaking factors about what a shutdown means for the economic system, immigration, employee paycheques, catastrophe response and providers for low-income households. The blame is sort of all the time positioned on the opposite occasion.
A reminder: Republicans management the presidency and each chambers of Congress. However passing laws to increase authorities funding at present ranges would require, below longstanding guidelines, greater than half a dozen Democrats to aspect with Republicans so as to attain the 60-vote threshold to advance to a vote. This provides Democrats some negotiating leverage, which they’re in search of to make use of within the spending combat.
Social providers
Girls, Infants, and Youngsters programme will ‘not be funded’
Home Speaker Mike Johnson, in September 29 remarks to reporters.
Johnson omits that enrollees will nonetheless probably get providers, not less than initially. However a lot will depend on how lengthy the shutdown lasts.
The Agriculture Division’s shutdown plan stated its Girls, Infants and Youngsters vitamin programme, which gives meals to low-income households, shall proceed operations “topic to the provision of funding”. The WIC has 6.9 million individuals.
WIC ought to have the ability to proceed for not less than one week, stated Alison Onerous, Nationwide WIC Affiliation coverage director. After that, operations will differ by state, relying on their funds.
Throughout a shutdown, state WIC programmes have choices to quickly fill the funding hole, together with varied USDA sources, state cash and requesting early rebate funds from their contracted toddler system producers.
Previous shutdowns
‘Again in 2013, Trump stated it was the President’s job to barter and keep away from a shutdown’
Senator Jeff Merkley, in a September 29 X publish
That’s an correct paraphrase of Trump’s remarks.
In an October 7, 2013, interview with then-Fox Information host Greta Van Susteren, Trump criticised then-President Barack Obama for not being a dealmaker in the course of the shutdown. In full, he stated: “You must get everyone in a room. You must be a pacesetter. The president has to steer. He has to get [the Speaker of the House] and everyone else in a room, and so they should make a deal. You must be good and be offended and be wild and cajole and do all types of issues, however it’s a must to get a deal.”
Trump made related remarks in a September 2013 Fox & Buddies cellphone interview: “Issues begin from the highest, and so they should get solved from the highest, and the president’s the chief, and he’s obtained to get everyone in a room, and he’s obtained to steer.”
Healthcare
Republicans are spiking medical health insurance premiums by 75 p.c for on a regular basis People in the event that they don’t lengthen enhanced ACA subsidies
Consultant Katherine Clark, in a September 12 X publish.
That is largely true.
If the Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t lengthen Reasonably priced Care Act enhanced subsidies earlier than they expire on the finish of this yr, enrollees should pay extra.
A KFF evaluation of federal information discovered that the common improve in out-of-pocket protection value for enrollees could be 79 p.c, with state-by-state common will increase starting from 49 p.c to 195 p.c.
This value improve would come from a mixture of insurance coverage premium will increase and the disappearance of subsidies, reasonably than from “spiking medical health insurance premiums” alone.
Greater than two weeks after Clark’s assertion – and after we revealed the very fact test – KFF produced a revised determine for common will increase primarily based on new information: 114 p.c.
‘Democrats so-called proposal is a partisan want checklist with a $1.5 trillion spending improve tacked onto a four-week funding invoice’
Home Speaker Mike Johnson, in a September 29 information launch.
The Republican speaking level misses the context of the Democrats’ proposal.
The September 17 Democratic proposal latches authorities funding up till October 31, often known as a “persevering with decision”, to some Democratic priorities, together with healthcare help and limiting Trump’s means to claw again funds beforehand accepted by Congress.
The invoice requires completely extending enhanced Reasonably priced Care Act subsidies that have been handed in 2021 in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and prolonged in 2022. These are set to run out on December 31 this yr. The Democratic invoice would additionally reverse cuts to Medicaid and different well being programmes that Republicans enacted of their signature tax and spending legislation.
The Democrats’ measure would restore funding for public broadcasting that Republicans nixed in July and contains not less than $320m for safety for lawmakers, the chief department and the Supreme Courtroom. (Republicans have proposed $88m in safety funding of their decision invoice.)
The invoice additionally comprises mandates for the way the Trump administration can spend cash and would hinder the White Home’s current try to cancel virtually $5bn in foreign aid.
The Committee for a Accountable Federal Funds, a gaggle that’s hawkish on the deficit, stated in a September 18 information launch that Democrats’ proposal in its entirety would add $1.5 trillion to the nationwide debt over the following decade.
“The [continuing resolution] itself – the half that funds the federal government – wouldn’t add $1.5 trillion to the debt, however the invoice that Democrats have proposed contains different provisions that will,” Chris Towner, the group’s coverage director, wrote in an electronic mail. “The invoice repeals the well being spending cuts that have been included within the One Large Stunning Invoice Act, which might value about $1.1 trillion over a decade to repeal.”
Towner additionally stated the Democrats’ provision to make the improved ACA subsidies everlasting would value about $350bn over a decade.
If enhanced subsidies usually are not prolonged, folks with insurance coverage via the Reasonably priced Care Act will see their premiums rise ‘twice as a lot within the rural areas’
Senator Amy Klobuchar, in a September 28 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation
That is largely true.
There are not less than two methods to interpret Klobuchar’s assertion: that she was evaluating rural enrollees’ prices with folks dwelling elsewhere, or evaluating their prices with what they paid earlier than.
Klobuchar’s workplace instructed PolitiFact that the senator was referring to rural enrollees seeing will increase that have been double what that they had paid earlier than, and that interpretation aligns with what Klobuchar has stated in different settings.
An evaluation by the Century Basis, a progressive assume tank, discovered that out-of-pocket insurance coverage prices would improve on common in rural counties from $713 to $1,473 – a 107 p.c improve, or barely greater than a doubling.
Evaluating rural enrollees’ value will increase with folks elsewhere, it quantities to a disproportionately giant improve for rural areas, but it surely’s not twice as a lot.
Enrollees in rural counties would see common out-of-pocket losses of $760 from expiring enhanced subsidies, in contrast with $624 for all counties and $593 for city counties. That’s 22 p.c extra for rural enrollees in contrast with all others, and 28 p.c extra in contrast with city enrollees.
Authorities staff
‘If the federal government shuts down, members of Congress nonetheless receives a commission. The janitors by no means receives a commission’
Daniel Koh, on The Individuals’s Cupboard podcast episode, September 29.
That is largely true.
Members of the Home and Senate continue to get paid throughout a shutdown. Federal legislation says federal staff get again pay, however the legislation doesn’t lengthen to contractors, a gaggle that features many janitors. Some non-public employers with federal contracts could discover methods to pay their staff, however there’s nothing in federal legislation that requires it.
‘FEMA received’t be funded’ throughout hurricane season due to the shutdown
Home Speaker Mike Johnson, in September 29 remarks to reporters
Johnson was appropriate that Congress had not agreed on Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) funding, however a Division of Homeland Safety shutdown procedures plan estimates that 84 p.c of FEMA staff will proceed working. (The DHS oversees FEMA.)
“Backside line: hurricanes don’t care about politics. FEMA will nonetheless reply. However restoration will stall if Congress can’t do its job,” stated Craig Fugate, who led FEMA throughout President Barack Obama’s administration after main Florida’s emergency administration below then-Republican Governor Jeb Bush. “This isn’t new – each events personal the blame.”
The company’s restoration efforts are most in danger, Fugate stated, as a result of they rely on how a lot cash stays within the Catastrophe Aid Fund. “These {dollars} aren’t tied to the shutdown, however they normally run low this time of yr. Usually, Congress passes a seamless decision so as to add cash. A shutdown implies that doesn’t occur. That slows restoration initiatives, not the rapid response.”
The fund had about $2.3bn on the finish of August, which is taken into account low.
