Washington, DC — The federal government is under a widespread shutdown due to a partisan impasse over spending and health care. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, says “Democrats are holding the Senate hostage.”
Grassley says Republicans wanted at least what’s known as a clean continuing resolution, a bare-bones agreement that simply says spending will remain exactly the same for a given period of time, with nothing additional tacked on.
That’s because Democrats, in Grassley’s words, are heeding the wishes of “radical activists in their base.”
Grassley serves on the Senate Finance Committee, where separate negotiations were going to be held on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will expire December 31st. Those talks haven’t materialized.
Grassley accuses Democrats of trying to attach a wide array of partisan funding items to the national budget that would cost more than a trillion dollars.
Grassley says he opposes these shutdown threats, and especially actual shutdowns, as a gigantic waste of time and resources.
There have been ten government shutdowns since 1980, only three in the past quarter century.
