Last-ditch funding vote not likely to bring much drama - but could offer cluespublished at 22:49 BST 30 September

22:49 BST 30 September

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

Senate votes can be high drama. Recall the late John McCain of Arizona dramatically casting a “thumbs-down” to foil his party’s efforts to repeal the Obamacare health-insurance programme in 2017, or the narrow fight to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh the following year.

This evening's last-ditch attempts to avert a government shutdown are unlikely to offer any such memorable moments.

Even with the battle lines firmly set, however, it will be interesting to see if any Democrats break ranks and side with the Republicans. If there are more than a handful, it could indicate that there are fractures within the party that could spread once the pressure – and political pain – increases as the shutdown gets fully underway.

Visitors hoping to browse the collections at the Library of Congress may want to start making other plans.

Unless Congress reaches a deal, "effective 12:01 am Wednesday, Oct. 1, all Library of Congress buildings will be CLOSED to the public and researchers", the library advises.

"All public events will be cancelled."

The library's Thomas Jefferson Building is currently featuring exhibitions on the legacy of George and Ira Gershwin, including personal correspondence and sheet music, and The Two Georges, a display highlighting the duelling positions of George Washington and King George III.

The library also has concerts planned in October, including by London's Consone Quartet.

Image source, US Library of Congress

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

We’ve just seen our first senator, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski.

Like many senators when they don’t want to talk, she stayed in conversation with her staffers, ignoring reporters' questions.

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Senators are expected to begin casting their votes for a last-ditch funding stopgap any minute now. I'm among the dozens of reporters waiting outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol for that vote to conclude.

I'm in a basement hallway, where cameras aren’t allowed but reporters are.

There were lots of folks like myself staked out here earlier in the day. Now, there's twice as many.

When senators finishing voting, they'll have to walk by us gathered press to leave the chamber. We're hoping they answer some of our questions.

I'll let you know what we hear from them.

The last US government shutdown was the longest ever, at 35 days. During that period between December 2018 and January 2019, a host of government sites were forced to close, and the effects sprawled across a large part of public life for many Americans.

This included delays at airports and struggles with staffing national landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and national parks across America.

Image source, Gianrigo Marletta/AFP

Image source, Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Image source, Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Image source, Nicolaus Czarnecki

Natalie Sherman
Business reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Analysts are expecting about 40% of the federal workforce – more than 800,000 people – to be put on unpaid leave as a result of the shutdown.

That will depress spending – and also have wider ramifications, as environmental permitting, patent approvals, payments to contractors and other kinds of government activity tied to business comes to a halt.

Analysts estimate that the shutdown could shave as much as 0.2 percentage points off of US economic growth for each week it lasts.

But the economy typically recoups most of that lost activity after a shutdown ends, as it would after disruption caused by a natural disaster.

That could be one reason why the stock market has appeared largely unfazed by the current stand-off.

On the other hand, analysts say that if Trump carries out his threat of mass firings, the damage could be more long-lasting.

Image source, Getty Images

We have just heard from Donald Trump at the White House, where he once again said he would carry out mass firings of government employees in the event of a shutdown.

He blames Democrats for the shutdown and says: "We'd be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected."

"The last thing we want to do is shut it down, but a lot of good can come down from shutdowns," Trump says. "We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want, and they'd be Democrat things."

As the Senate prepares to vote on a last-ditch spending package to keep the US government funded, there's several key Democrats whose votes may decide the fate of the bill.

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate and, if every Republican votes in favour of the bill, then they'll need at least 7 Democrats to join their side - if they can also snag a Yes vote from Republican Senator Rand Paul, who has indicated he may break with his caucus and vote No.

There are 10 Democratic senators to watch out for, all of whom voted with Republicans to advance another temporary spending bill back in March.

• Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada
• Dick Durbin of Illinois
• John Fetterman of Pennsylvania
• Kirsten Gillibrand of New York
• Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire
• Angus King of Maine (an independent who caucuses with Democrats)
• Gary Peters of Michigan
• Brian Schatz of Hawaii
• Chuck Schumer of New York
• Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire

This time around, though, Chuck Schumer has said he will not support a temporary stopgap to delay a shutdown.

In a 19 September vote, all Democrats voted against the Republican bill with the exception of Fetterman, who says he will continue to support it. And in that vote, two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted against their party's wishes.

Murkowski said earlier she plans to vote Yes on the continuing resolution.

Any funding measure will need 60 votes in the Senate to move forward. Senators are expected to vote in the next couple of hours on a continuing resolution already passed in the House of Representatives.

Here's where the likely vote count is for the moment:

Republicans hold a 53-seat majority in the 100-member Senate.

• That means Republicans need seven Democrats or independents to vote with them to reach the 60-vote threshold to pass a spending resolution and keep the government open. They will likely need eight, since they my not be able to count on a vote from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky

Democrats hold 45 seats. The chamber’s two Independents, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, usually vote with Democrats.

• That means Democrats would need 13 Republicans to vote their way to pass a spending plan to keep the government open

At this point, the prospects do not look good for either side to be able to pass their preferred resolution to keep the government funded.

Republicans earlier this month defeated a Democrat proposal to keep the government open through October and make health subsidies permanent for low-income individuals. Likewise, Democrats blocked a Republican resolution to fund the government though 21 November.

The numbers look far different than when the Senate took up legislation to keep the government open in March. At that point, 10 Democrats voted for the Republican bill.

As a reminder, if senators cannot agree on a plan by midnight eastern time (0500 BST) the government will run out of money and have to shut down.

We're waiting to see if a government shutdown will go ahead. For US President Donald Trump, this is a familiar story.

He was the leader during the last shutdown in 2018 - the longest in US history.

Trump faced a 35-day shutdown, when Democrats resisted Trump's demand for $5.7bn (£4.4bn) for his Mexico border wall.

Nine of 15 federal departments, including State, Homeland Security, Transportation, Agriculture and Justice began partially shutting down after funding for them lapsed.

It saw huge affects on the aviation industry, as air traffic controllers faced long shifts and low numbers. Meanwhile, the FBI faced running out of resources. There were food shortages for the Coast Guard, and other food safety fears. Some 800,000 civil servants missed their paydays.

It stopped when Trump backed down and ended the stalemate. But that's not how he described it. He wrote at the time it was not a "concession", but instead "taking care of the millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the shutdown".

The US economy lost $3bn (£2.2bn) from the closure of federal agencies, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said at the time.

• The impact of the government shutdown in 2018

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Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer continues to speak to reporters, he says his Republican colleagues like to “tell lies”.

He has moved on to talking about the Democrats desires to extend Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, benefits set to expire later this year.

Republicans have repeatedly said Democrats want to fund healthcare for "illegal immigrants".

The federal government does not fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants under the ACA or Medicaid, Schumer says.

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Image source, Getty Images

Democrats do not want a shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tells reporters as he reaches the podium just minutes after Republican leadership spoke.

After months of asking to meet with Trump, Schumer says he and the Democratic House leader visited the White House yesterday.

Schumer says from those discussions it was clear Trump doesn’t understand what a government shutdown would mean for Americans.

Reporters are expecting to ask Schumer questions shortly - you can follow along by clicking Watch live at the top of this page.

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

We’re expecting a Senate vote at around 17:00 EDT (22:00 BST). Exactly when remains unclear.

Both government funding bills will get a vote.

The first is the continuing resolution - the short term solution to keep the government open another seven weeks - which was passed by the House.

The second bill expected to get a vote will be the Democratic counter-proposal.

Also a reminder that federal funding expires tonight at midnight.

Thune's speech void of any veiled threatpublished at 19:53 BST 30 September

19:53 BST 30 September

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

Majority Leader John Thune, flanked by other top Senate Republicans, stuck to the party line during his just-concluded press conference at the Capitol.

His party’s strategy is to characterise their request – to fund the government until mid-November – as a “routine” move to afford more time for negotiations.

Absent was anything like the veiled threat Trump made in the Oval Office earlier today about how the shutdown might open the door to permanently cutting government programmes that Democrats like.

That may be because some of the possible spending on the chopping block – “things medically and other ways, including benefits”, in Trump’s words – are not only popular with the public, they help Republican voters, too.

Thune may figure that it is best to leave the threat – and, in particular, the details of it – unstated for now.

Image source, EPA

Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader of the House, says the Democrats are seeking a path forward that still makes their message clear to Republicans.

The message is that they will not support a partisan Republican spending bill "that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people”.

Speaking on a live stream on YouTube, which is expected to last for 24 hours, he aims to highlight why Democrats are "holding the line against Trump and extreme Maga Republican efforts to rip away healthcare from millions of Americans".

“We’re here as House Democrats on duty. House Republicans are on vacation and they need to get back to Washington DC if they are serious at all about trying to find a path forward.”

Throughout the livestream, Jefferies is being joined by House Democrats giving their perspective on why they are fighting for a path to fund the government.

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Thune is still speaking to reporters at the Capitol, he tells us that spending negotiations will happen if the government stays open.

"This is not complicated," he says adding that this is something that has happened repeatedly under Democratic leadership.

During the Biden administration, there were 13 continuing resolutions, he repeatedly says.

Thune has left the podium, and the reporters around me are all chatting amongst themselves, asking "What's next? and "Where do Democrats go from here?"

We should hear from Democrats shortly - we'll bring you their comments once we have them, stay with us.

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Capitol Hill

Image source, Ana Faguy / BBC

John Thune, the Republican leader of the Senate, is addressing reporters now.

He says that Senate Democrats have a clear choice: either vote for the continuing resolution passed in the House that keeps spending levels the same, or shut the government down.

Thune says Republicans won’t be “taken hostage" to give "illegals free healthcare".

As a reminder, Democrats don’t want to use continuing resolutions to keep the government open. They want to negotiate an agreement to renew the government health insurance subsidies for low-income individuals that expire at the end of the year.

We'll have more comments from Senator John Thune in our next post.

Since 1980, the US government has shutdown 15 times.

Going back a few decades, the time they lasted was much shorter, ranging from 1-5 days.

Republican Ronald Reagan oversaw eight shutdowns during his presidency in the 1980s - all were relatively brief.

But as the late 90s came, so did longer shutdowns. They became fewer and further between, but climaxed with a record 35-day event at the end of 2018 - the longest in history and during Trump's first term.

It was one of three Trump faced during his time in office.

Sakshi Venkatraman
Live reporter

Image source, William Cridge

Firefighter William Cridge says he will be expected to work without pay during the government shutdown.

The 38-year-old single father-of-three tells me he lives pay cheque-to-pay cheque.

"No matter what, I have to be here, whether the government works or not," he said. "We're spending however long they take to argue with themselves about nothing without pay."

He feels like no one in the government cares about federal workers anymore and that the climate is against them.

"It's me who protects your kids," he says. "You send your kids to the army, it's me who puts the Band-Aids on, it's me who makes sure they're not on fire."

Cridge works for the Department of Defense, and though his job is similar to that of a local firefighter, his obstacles are entirely different. He says his union is trying to do what they can, but they're pushing back against the federal government.

"There is no fight for us," he said. "My direct supervisors are Congress and Donald Trump. We have no one else to turn to."

He'll get back-pay once the government reopens, but until then, he's in limbo. Even with his current wages, Cridge says he has to work a second job to afford food for his kids.

"I've already been having issues getting rent in on time," he said.