Government Shutdown Drags Into Day Three as Senate Stalls Over Spending Bill

The U.S. government shutdown is stretching into a third day, with no breakthrough in sight. The Senate kept its doors open on Thursday but didn’t bother to vote — Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, took precedence.

That means the earliest possible vote is Friday, though even Senate Majority Leader John Thune admits the odds aren’t great. He told reporters a weekend session is “unlikely,” so the shutdown will almost certainly carry into next week.

The math hasn’t changed: neither Republicans nor Democrats have been able to rally the 60 votes needed to push through their competing spending bills. Party-line politics continue to rule the day.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told CBS News the House is “coming back next week” with a fresh proposal for the Senate.

“They’re anxious to come back,” he added. Republicans, who hold 53 seats, are also busy trying to peel off individual senators.

Some Democrats and independents have crossed the aisle — Maine’s Angus King and Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto among them — saying the damage from a shutdown outweighs holding out for partisan wins.

But Trump is openly using the crisis to shrink government, bucking the usual approach of just furloughing workers. On Truth Social he bragged about consulting Russ Vought, his former budget director, on which agencies to slash — permanently, if need be.

“To determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut,” Trump wrote.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed cuts are “likely going to be in the thousands,” and said $26 billion in programs, mostly in blue states like California, New York, and Illinois, have already been frozen.

Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to claw back health care concessions lost under Trump’s sweeping “One Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this year. They want subsidies for the Affordable Care Act restored and cuts to Medicaid for non-citizens reversed.

All of this political trench warfare has a hefty price tag. Ernst & Young estimates the U.S. economy loses about $7 billion for every week the shutdown drags on.