Democrats are seeking concessions on reversing cuts to healthcare benefits and extending subsidies that form part of key healthcare legislation known as Obamacare.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of federal workers will be furloughed and various services and federal agencies will be affected nationwide.<\/p>\n
The minority Democrats have resisted giving Republicans the eight votes required to reach the 60-vote threshold required to pass the funding legislation in the Senate.<\/p>\n
The last shutdown came during US President Donald Trump\u2019s first term in 2018, the longest government shutdown in America\u2019s history, lasting 35 days.<\/p>\n
Democrats want to use the funding bill to reverse Republican cuts made to healthcare, which non-partisan groups say would reduce hundreds of billions of dollars to Medicaid spending and increase the number of uninsured by several million.<\/p>\n
Republican Senate leadership has expressed openness to negotiate, but not on the stopgap funding measure.<\/p>\n
Trump warned Democrats that a shutdown could lead to irreversible actions, including shutting down programmes and firing staff permanently.<\/p>\n
The question now is which side will blink first.<\/p>\n
–SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12471,"template":"default||default||default||default||default||default||default||default","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-12470","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded","published_date":null,"news_description":"A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded||A government shutdown took effect just after midnight in the United States (US) as lawmakers in Washington failed to reach a consensus on legislation to keep the federal government funded","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18062,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12470\/revisions\/18062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=12470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}