Filenews 6 October 2025
Republican leaders warned of more "progressively painful" consequences of fiscal paralysis in the US on Sunday, which was followed by President Donald Trump's announcement of the first layoffs in the federal public sector.
The threat of mass layoffs in federal schools has been lifted by the Republican head of state since the beginning, last Wednesday, of the fiscal paralysis for which the Republican majority and the Democratic minority in Congress accuse each other.
The shutdown, the suspension of sectors of the state, which enters its second week today, there is no indication that it is going to end and President Trump again accused the Democrats yesterday Sunday.
Mass layoffs, final and not technical, "are underway right now," President Trump told reporters at the White House.
"The Democrats are to blame for all this. The Democrats are causing the loss of many jobs," the head of state argued, before abruptly changing the subject, inaugurating a new gallery of presidential portraits with gold frames.
There has been no discussion between congressional leaders since their fruitless meeting last Monday at the White House, according to a senior Democratic official. The party refuses to give in on the critical issue of health insurance subsidies.
"If the president decides that the negotiations lead absolutely nowhere, then layoffs will begin," Kevin Hassett, Mr. Trump's top economic adviser, threatened yesterday when asked by CNN.
However, "we remain hopeful that there will be a new beginning at the beginning of the week, that we will be able to convince the Democrats that it is common sense to avoid such layoffs," he added.
For his part, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, John Thune, acknowledged that the two camps remain in a "stalemate" and hinted that more American workers will pay the cost.
"It's going to be unpleasant," he told Fox News, confirming that talks continue in the corridors about subsidies for "Obamacare", the health insurance program for the working classes.
How long could the fiscal paralysis, a phenomenon that the country has not experienced for seven years, be prolonged? "As much as the Democrats want", according to John Thune.
Technical unemployment
In March, while the threat of a shutdown was already looming, Democrats had made a first retreat when a minority in their ranks agreed to vote for a Republican text that only kept the controversial subsidies for six months.
"If Republicans continue to refuse to extend" Obamacare subsidies, "tens of thousands of taxpayers will suffer a spectacular increase" in health care costs, Hakim Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, told NBC News.
Hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" employees of the federal state have been made unemployed from a technical point of view and do not receive a salary. If they are not fired, they will see their situation normalize when the shutdown ends.
Periods of fiscal paralysis cause great dissatisfaction among Americans. 80% of respondents said they were very or somewhat worried about the impact on the economy, according to a YouGov poll of a representative sample of some 2,400 citizens.
The previous such episode, in December 2018, during Donald Trump's first term, lasted 35 days and cost some $11 billion dollars in the US economy, according to a nonpartisan congressional report.
