Transcription
There's no sign of an end to the US government shutdown. 1.4 million workers are going without pay, while some people on federal aid are worrying how they'll get their next meal. How can the standoff between Republicans and Democrats be resolved? And what'll happen if it goes on? This is Inside Story.
Hello, welcome to the program. I'm Adrien Finnegan. The US government shutdown is continuing with little sign of an end to the month-long bitter political stalemate driving it. Around 1.4 million federal employees are working without pay or on unpaid leave, and some operations have had to close down. But the worst hit are the poor and vulnerable people reliant on government programs or services. As Republican and Democrat politicians blame each other, critics say their political leaders in Congress are more preoccupied with the political battle than its immediate consequences. So, how has the world's biggest economy again ended up in this situation? And who's worst affected? What are the political risks and calculations for both Republicans and Democrats? And what role is President Donald Trump playing? We'll speak to our guests shortly, but first this report from Alexander Bayas.
"It's been dubbed the politics of pain."
"This is an utter moral failure. This fault is squarely on the shoulders of the Democrats."
Republicans and Democrats trading blame over what's now the second longest US government shutdown in history. The two sides battling to see how much worse the other is willing to allow the state of governing the country to become. Hundreds of thousands of workers are now going without pay. Air travel delays are surging. And for the first time ever, 42 million Americans could go hungry. The SNAP program relies on government funding to help low-income families buy food. Nearly 40% of its recipients are children and 20% are above the age of 60.
"This program is a blessing. It's a very blessing to know that they are helping us and helping our kids and helping us be able to feed our children when we don't have jobs right now."
Republicans say the shutdown means there's no new money to fund it. Democrats say they won't vote to reopen the government until Republicans agree to extend health insurance subsidies.
"The Democrats have caused the problem on food stamps because all they have to do is sign and you know if they sign I'll meet with them."
Democrats insist the Trump administration is illegally withholding short-term funding. Never before in American history, not once under a Democratic president or Republican president has SNAP funding lapsed during a shutdown. Not even in 2019 during Trump's last shutdown. In fact, Trump himself funded SNAP throughout that shutdown. So this argument that he can't do it, that he doesn't have the money, that it's not legal, is just bull, self-serving, nasty, vicious bull. Federal judges have ordered Trump to keep funding the program.
"Food is a basic human right. Whether however you align yourself politically, people still need to eat."
Studies show most people using the program are in rural areas that have a majority of Republican voters. And as each tries to blame the other, a new poll shows nearly half of Americans blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, while a third say Democrats in Congress are responsible. Some observers say the political stalemate marks a new low for American politics.
"This isn't a political game. These are real people's lives that we're talking about."
And is an ideological battle where winning is more important than doing what's right for the public with the poorest paying the price. Alexander Buyers, Al Jazeera for Inside Story.
Let's bring in our guests from Los Angeles. We're joined by Marina Lynn, co-founder of Project Restoress, a volunteer-led organization which supports communities facing food insecurity. From Washington DC, we're joined by Nile Stannage, White House columnist for The Hill, an American newspaper and digital media company. And also in Los Angeles, Chris Tilly, economist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Welcome uh to you all. Now, let's start with you. Why have government shutdowns seemed to have become a feature of US budget politics? This keeps happening or at least seems to leaving those of us in the rest of the world looking on in beused disbelief. I mean, this is the United States for heaven's sake, the world's leading economy. And does this shutdown differ from from previous government shutdowns?
Well, it may differ in the sense that the climate here is becoming more and more polarized. So something like this is perhaps more likely to happen. But you're quite right. I mean, this is very different from many other nations throughout the world. And that the United States government needs specific legislation to be passed to fund its operations. That is not just automatically funded uh out of general taxation and the priorities of a particular given government. Before 1980, the laws around it or the practices around it tended tended to be a bit more lax. Since then, there have been roughly a dozen shutdowns. There were none during President Biden's term, the most recent one prior to this during President Trump's Trump's first term.
Chris, um before we hear uh about the impact this is having having on um uh low-income families, uh tell us something about about the economic impact of of of government shutdowns. What what economic disruptions does does a shutdown cause? Alexandra was talking about there being um delays with with with air traffic. How quickly do the effects ripple through the economy as a whole?
Well, there's a range of different effects and some effects are immediate. Workers are not getting paid. There's $650,000 workers furled. A similar number working without pay. Uh federal contractors are not getting paid. There's $12 billion in contracts to small businesses that are not going out. Those are felt immediately. Then there are also longer-term ripple effects like multiplier effects. the workers that don't get paid, don't, you know, don't go out to lunch, don't take their kids to movies. There are knock-on effects, like you mentioned, the air traffic controllers who don't go to work when flights are delayed. People just fly less. And potentially the most destructive effect, but not the the most immediate one, is if businesses and consumers lose confidence because that could push us into a recession.
Marina, more than 40 million million Americans use the the supplemental nutrition assistance program or or SNAP that Alexandra was was telling us about with with food stamps about to stop going out. What can you tell us about how this shutdown is affecting communities that that your organization serves?
Yeah, we're already seeing the impact of this um with our healthcare partners and our pantries on the ground. Um, it's quite devastating. I mean, um, the the impact of this, um, was already seen this past Friday when we normally see one pantry normally gets 150 recipients come in and and get a bag of groceries, um, for the week, but they this time distributed nearly 250 and people had brought their family members. Um, with the healthc care provider uh that we work with, um, they they're forecasting a total loss of their uh, grocery budget. Uh these families. So, they're having to take up extra shifts. Um, they're terrified that their kids will go hungry and this is not a scenario that anyone wants to see um in this country. Like the kids should not be the ones to suffer for for these kinds of um decisions.
Marina, we we saw a a woman in Alexandra's report in in tears because of the the threat of of going hungry. She couldn't afford to pay her her her grocery bill. Are are people in America really going to go hungry because of this government shutdown?
Absolutely. They count on every single dollar in order to put food on the table. Um, the average SNAP recipient uh receives $356. Um, that's your entire grocery budget for the month. Um, there was a parent with a child with developmental delays, a single parent, and they said that they were down to their last $100 from the previous month, and they were just going to work on making that that last. Um, we last saw this with um, at least with my organization, I mean, we've seen this chronically over time, but this kind of acute loss of income um, for food uh, during the pandemic, and this is uh, beyond what what we've seen before. It's completely um it's really scary. We usually meet the needs of folks who are already falling through the cracks of existing safety nets like SNAP, but if the safety net breaks completely um you know, we're looking at depleting our reserves to actually meet that need.
Nile writing in the Guardian newspaper on Saturday, Senator Bernie Sanders said that Democrats quote must stand with working families and in opposition to Donald Trump's authoritarianism. This may be the most consequential moment in American history since the Civil War, he said, uh, with an administration that's waging war against the working class and the most vulnerable people. What What do you make of that? It how much of this is about posturing and policies and the argument about which party is to blame for for the for the ampass.
Mhm. Well, in relation to authoritarianism, I mean, we have seen President Trump move primarily in other areas in an authoritarian direction. You know, attacking law firms, prosecuting political opponents, uh cracking down on the media or attempting to intimidate the media and so on and so forth. Now, this I think links to the authoritarianism element only really in the sense that President Trump has a a a very deep-seated uh fear of appearing weak. He wants ideally to to roll over the Democrats to dominate the Democrats and to thwart them from the policy goal of this shutdown, which is really to extend subsidies for the purchase of of health insurance. Ju just one more point briefly if I may Adrien and I don't want to um go on to Marina's territory where she has much more expertise than I do but you asked about whether people are going hungry in the United States as someone who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years but was raised elsewhere. I think the biggest international misconception about life in America is that there's perhaps a very small proportion of the population that's really poor and then everyone else is doing fine. There are enormous numbers of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, no savings to speak of, more than 40 million people relying on this SNAP program for groceries to feed themselves. And I think really it it does bear emphasizing how many working poor people there are in the United States for reasons that would take a whole other conversation to to talk about relating to corporate power, a low minimum wage and things of that nature.
Chris, I'll come back to you in a second, but Marina, I saw you nodding in agreement there. I mean, you're dealing with this situation every day. Nile is right, isn't he?
Absolutely. I think that's a very popular misconception that everyone's just doing fine, but it truly is paycheck to paycheck. Um, it truly is taking up that extra shift with Door Dash in order to make the couple dollars to afford food. And we often forget that low-income groups in this country actually have the least access to nutritious and lowcost food. So, their their cost for food is actually much higher than than for for those with higher incomes. And that's a very um perverse uh um detail related to their geographies and where grocery stores um typically are available. So it actually cost them a lot more time, a lot more miles traveled, and a lot more money to get the same nutrition that I'd be able to access easily. Um and uh that's the troubling part of it. So just cutting out the safety net um you know, they're going to choose to pay for food instead of paying for their rent. So you can imagine the housing insecurity that will come from this. And we're already seeing that anxiety. the mental health effects. And um you know, our pantry coordinator um he usually just deals with uh the community that he works with um in the public housing and and uh the local groups. But like recently, just this past week, he's been reached out to like three schools reached out to him to help with their students because they're terrified that their student um their student families will have trouble putting food on the table. And the fact that you have these community groups trying to come together that never talk to each other usually um is is really scary. It's just the tip of the iceberg, I think, of of what's what's about to happen.
Chris, I know you're an economist, but and I'm and I'm my uh question has an economic bent to it eventually, but we're going to start with politics. Could we see Democrats, the party that of of the blue collar worker traditionally in the US, although that has changed in the years of late, could they lose support from their base over the fallout of this? Are Republicans also at risk of losing their voters in the labor force? Do do government shutdowns have um damaging effects, lingering effects on the labor workforce in the United States? Are jobs going to be lost? I mean, could this shutdown lead to to jobs disappearing that won't come back?
Well, first of all, on the question of whether Democrats and or Republicans will lose support, yeah, I mean, working people are fed up with both parties about this. And, you know, for example, uh, federal workers unions that are part of the Democratic base have said, "We need to end this shutdown now." Uh, and have have broken with the Democratic Party line on that. So everybody's fed up and more and more people are defining themselves as independents. In terms of the longerterm effects, it partly depends how long the shutdown lasts. The longest one we've ever had was 35 days. We're on day 33, so that's not looking good. Uh it also depends whether Trump is able and willing to follow through on some of the threats he's made he's made about permanently laying off some workers and not paying back pay to workers who are furled. Uh but we economists feel like there's a lot of reasons to be concerned because the economy is already fragile. The Federal Reserve and economic forecasters are saying we're we're sort of scarily close to falling into a recession. So, it may not take much to push us over the edge.
No. On on Thursday, President Trump called for Senate Republicans to quote, "Initiate the nuclear option and end the filibuster." Would would the Senate seriously consider changing the voting rules to get past Democratic objections to the budget?
There are some senators who would, but our reporters at the Hill who cover the Senate closely don't believe there is a majority to do that. Um, for members of our audience who aren't completely familiar with this, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds of it, but basically it's a procedure in the Senate that requires a super majority of 60 votes in a 100 member body to pass legislation. That's what we're talking about. Should that be abolished to make it a simple majority? If it did, it would make life a lot easier for Republicans who currently hold a 53 to 47 majority. So, that's uh where that element of it stands. I don't expect the filibuster to be completely abolished. Whether there's some kind of arcane workaround found on this occasion, maybe. But it's uh Senate rules are a very a very complicated matter. And uh it would be a long time talking about those.
Marina, I I I want to pick up on on something that you were were talking about earlier um about how shutdowns like this widened socioeconomic inequality. Are there lessons from past shutdowns or or or events that that the US perhaps could be should be applying now to protect uh food security and and and to mitigate uh the widening of that poverty gap?
I think the only solution is um to strengthen these public assistance programs that we're now seeing um an a huge interruption to uh this month because these public assistance programs are literally the safety net that make it possible for students to learn in school to for people to go to work not hungry. Um and uh historically we've seen with other other countries and their public assistance programs um that the more the stronger you make these programs, the more resilient you make your economy and the more successful um it actually meets the need meets the needs of protecting food security. Um the more you restrict the program, the more you open it to potentially more fraud and waste. Um and that's proven time and time again. Um so the only answer is to further fund SNAP instead of um cut you know allowing any disruption or allowing uh or increasing any requirements um to qualify for it. Um so with the COVID uh 19 pandemic we saw similar similarly steep loss in income. we saw um uh food shortages and uh SNAP um was still in play and and it made sure that families could at least depend on that sort of backbone for their grocery budget. Um so that was huge and for us we picked up kind of the gap in being able to access um a different supply chain, this restaurant supply chain and getting groceries to uh folks who couldn't leave home, who didn't have work. Um, so we really are kind of a stop gap solution. We're not um we're not meant to replace any sort of government uh safety net and um the solution for the future is to strengthen that safety net and to build it back up. Not what the direction is right now, which is disruption and and diminishment of this net.
Uh Chris, feel free to come in on on what Marina was saying there. You mentioned the the Rword. I mean, politicians on both sides of the R. They're well aware of of the danger given uh that the economy is already, as you say, uh in a in a fragile state. Who's going to blink first?
I that's a better question for Nile. I do not know who's going to blink first. Uh but part of what's important to keep in mind is that this is part of a longer fight about the the role of government. I mean, a lot of this is about the Trump's big beautiful bill that that kept taxes low on on billionaires and cut back on the kind of safety net that Marina was talking about. So, this is this is one crisis point, but it's a long-term battle.
Nile, I'll ask you then as it's as it's as it's your turn. What What could break the I Go on. you tell tell me what you think and then I'll I've got a follow-up for you.
Yeah. Well, well, I I'm glad to be handed the most difficult question because no one really knows who's going to blink. Although, I do think Democrats are in a politically tricky position because they're trying to leverage a government shutdown against a party, the Republicans, that are is kind of skeptical of government in the first place. So I'm not sure how that leverage works, but one brief point cutting against that suggesting the Republicans might um blink first. You alluded in one of your questions to Marina Adrian about how the demographics of voting are changing in this country. The exit polls at the last presidential election showed the lowest income group under 50,000 going very slightly to President Trump, 50 to 48% over Camela Harris. I say that really to say there are a lot of Trump voters within this 40 million people who will be deprived of uh food stamps or SNAP benefits. There are a lot of Trump voters who will be receiving these subsidies to purchase health insurance in the Obamacare exchanges. And so the idea this only hurts um Democratic voters or only hurts Democratic constituencies, that's not true at all. There's real pain for Trump voters if this situation continues.
And N I just wonder whether the results of of Tuesday's votes for for governor in New Jersey and Virginia uh along with the the New York mayoral race will allow either side an offramp here from from public employee unions as well.
Yeah. I mean the the union question is an interesting one but but on the election point I do think that after this handful of key elections are out of their way on Tuesday we may maybe see a renewed focus on trying to get a deal to reopen the government. It's not that these elections are like entirely dominating the national picture, but anytime there are high stakes elections, prominent elections, people do tend to dig into their respective partisan positions. Maybe after they're over, there will be at least a little bit of a loosening of the log jam.
Chris, if if this isn't sorted out soon, uh there are real fears as you as you say for for the state of of of the US economy. Why is it in such a paralous state right now?
Well, there's a variety of reasons. Uh part of it has to do with companies simply uh due to uncertainty not doing hiring. Part of it is being attributed to the the rapid spread of artificial intelligence. Uh which again companies wisely or not are are doing less hiring and are are laying workers off thinking that artificial intelligence is going to be doing a lot of of workers jobs. Uh but it's it's also partly that no expansion goes on forever. some of the stimulus that happened during the pandemic is is dying out and it's not clear where the new impetus comes from. Uh the Federal Reserve was sort of squeezing the economy by increasing interest rates to cut inflation and they may have overdone that. So it's it's not one factor. It's death by a thousand cuts, but there are lots of signals of weakness particularly in hiring at this point.
Marina, as someone who's who's dealing with the impact of not just the government shutdown, but but uh the fact that there is this this income inequality, this this huge uh inequality uh in uh society in in the United States. Here you are. You've got you've got a global platform. Um what would you want to say right now to America's politicians?
I think um we need to protect these safety nets. I mean, it's not just food right now. It's also healthcare. Um, and uh I think holding out for um for saving these safety nets um while funding them while this is happening uh is critical I think to honestly a functioning democracy. Um and we can look to other countries for where such safety nets have have protected the population and we have a functioning one. I think it's just the impending cuts um uh to to Medicaid and now uh this disruption to SNAP are quite terrifying. I mean this is this cuts a wide swath as as Neil mentioned of of Americans. I mean it's not just Democrats. These are you know these are the elderly. These are people unemployed. These are people employed. These are families with children. Um, it's the ripple effects are enormous uh for who exactly benefits from these safety nets. It's not just recipients. also the vendors themselves. Um so it's uh funding essential programs is should not be on the table like should not be on the cutting on the cutting block should not be at stake for these negotiations. Um this is this is a very basic uh tenant of a functioning democracy to to support um to protect hung to protect uh the right to food and um and healthcare.
Nile. Um I I I quoted that article in the Guardian on Saturday's Guardian newspaper from uh um Senator Bernie Sanders. Another quote. He went on to say that that Democrats in Congress are the last remaining opposition to Trump's quest for absolute power. Okay, that's a he's pouring uh scoring political points there. He said to surrender now would be an historic tragedy for our country. Something that history will not look kindly upon. The voters, do you think agree with him? Um, who do they blame, Republicans or Democrats here? To what extent is this the Democrats battle to lose that they could come off worse here?
Well, right now the polling indicates that a plurality of Americans blame the Republicans on Trump more than the Democrats, but it's not a slam dunk by any measure. and and Chris mentioned earlier on the frustration that voters feel with both parties. It is also true that it is the traditional role of the Democratic party or it's supposed to be at least to protect the more economically vulnerable. So if those more economically vulnerable voters take a big hit, will they complain about the um inefficacy of the Democratic party and standing up for their interests? This actually gets back to the point that you were just discussing with with Marina where we have the richest country in the history of the world and 40 million people need subsidies to buy their groceries. Like that seems to pose some fairly profound questions as to how the country's economy is set up, how the nation's politics are set up, the influence of corporations and and big money in that system. to skew things to such an extent that there's a enormously wealthy country with well over 10% of its population needing help to feed themselves. Like that seems I think to speak to the fundamental dissatisfaction that so many Americans feel about their country.
We're out of time. Many thanks indeed, Marina Lynn, Nile Stannage, and Chris Tilly. Thanks for watching. You can see the program again at any time by going to the website that's at aljazer.com. Uh for further discussion about this issue, join us at our Facebook page. You can find that at facebook.com/jinsidtory. And of course, you can join the conversation on X, our handle there at AJ inside story from me, Adrien Finnean, and the team here in Doha. We'll see you again. Bye for now.