The federal government remains shut down after a weekend of very little movement on negotiations.
In Texas, the shutdowns meant thousands of federal workers in the Lone Star State have been going to work without the promise of a paycheck. Texas has more federal civilian employees than all but three other states, according to the Texas Tribune. The funding gap’s expected to mean staff shortages at some of the federal parks in the state, with some services at the Veterans Administration and the Department of Agriculture affected.
But certain essential operations like air traffic control, border operations, federal law enforcement and the military remain largely unaffected. The same is true for benefits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and supplemental nutrition assistance, formerly known as food stamps.
Alison Craig, a professor in the Department of Government at UT-Austin, said the parties remain unable to agree on health care measures. Democrats want to see the extension of expiring tax credits that makes health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans, and for a reversal of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. Republicans have said that’s a no-go.
“What’s happening right now in the Senate is that they have both the Senate Democratic version of the plan… and then they have the House Republican’s version,” Craig said. “They’ve struck a deal that they’re going to vote on both of them, one after another. And so that’s what’s been happening in the Senate each time that they’ve brought the votes up.”
Craig said that forcing this shutdown is more or less the only leverage the Democratic Party has on the national level right now.
“The Republicans do have the trifecta of the House, the Senate and the White House. However, this is basically the one place where the Democrats are able to come in and say, ‘well, you need our votes. You need at least some of our votes’ because of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to get past the filibuster,” she said. “The Republicans do need at least some Democratic support in order to pass this bill. And so that gives the Democrats more power, certainly more power than they have in the House.”
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At this stage of the shutdown, Craig said it probably hasn’t impacted most people who don’t work for the government.
“Perversely, we’ve gotten good at shutdowns. The agencies have developed pretty detailed plans for how to meet the essential functions of their agency in a shutdown,” she said. “And a lot of the pain and shock that ordinary people would feel in the shutdown gets buffered. Really, I think that average people aren’t seeing this right now… When that starts to change, I think that is when the political momentum shifts a little.”
That change might happen, Craig said, when federal workers start missing paychecks.
“Congress actually passed legislation the last time around that actually does guarantee back pay, so federal workers are not stuck in this limbo anymore. They still are working without pay now though – that’s still an issue,” she said. “I think Friday is when the first federal employees are going to miss their first checks. Oct. 15 is when military service members are going to miss their check.”
Craig said if the last shutdown is a model, the first missed paycheck is a turning point.
“That’s when these workers are – especially the essential workers who are going to work and not getting their paychecks – that’s when they start to say, well, maybe I’m not going to do my job,” Craig said. “And that’s when people start to feel longer lines at,, airport checkpoints and whatnot, the sort of things that get them fired up.”
