GOP Threatens Retaliation, Halts Funds To Democrat-Led States Amid Shutdown

Republican leaders are threatening to impose targeted consequences against Democrats, including freezing billions in funding to Democratic-led states and laying off masses of federal workers, amid the federal government shutdown, HuffPost reports.

The government officially shut down on Wednesday (October 1) after lawmakers failed to agree on a funding bill before the Tuesday (September 30) deadline. Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-led measure to temporarily fund the government, demanding that any deal also include an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.

Republicans blamed Democrats for Wednesday's shutdown despite being unwilling to negotiate.

“The longer this goes on, the more pain will be inflicted,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Wednesday. “Every single bit of this was entirely avoidable.”

In a Fox Business interview, Johnson suggested the shutdown would give President Donald Trump broad executive power to act without congressional support.

“Democrats have handed the keys to the kingdom to the executive branch under President Trump to do some things that we would not otherwise be able to do because we would never get Democrat votes for them," Johnson said.

Ahead of the shutdown, Trump threatened to "get rid of" Democrat-favored programs.

“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns. We get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things," Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office.

On Wednesday, White House budget director Russ Vought announced that the administration had frozen $18 billion in federal infrastructure funding for New York, home to top Democrats Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Vought also revealed an additional $8 billion freeze on clean energy programs across 16 blue states, while Republican-led states were left untouched.

In a private call with GOP lawmakers, Vought added that federal layoffs would begin within two days. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also confirmed that permanent layoffs were on the table.

“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, and it’s because the Democrats have put us in this position,” Leavitt said.

Still, Democrats are demanding that any funding bill include the ACA subsidies extension.

“Vought thinks that he’s going to bully Democrats into submission by canceling all of these projects,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Wednesday. “If we’re smart, it’ll be evidence of why we have to fight even harder to stop the lawlessness, to protect our families.”

Schumer criticized the funding freezes as political extortion.

“[Trump is] using the American people as pawns, threatening pain on the country as blackmail,” Schumer said in a statement.

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