Mass layoffs of US federal workers will begin within two days, the White House says, as lawmakers trade blame over the first government shutdown in almost seven years.
The shutdown began on Wednesday after Republicans and Democrats in Congress failed to agree a new spending plan before the midnight deadline.
There is little sign that either side is willing to compromise, and a vote to end the shutdown failed just hours after it began.
The Senate has since adjourned, raising fears that the shutdown could drag on and threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs as well as risk costing the US economy billions in lost output.
At a White House briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Vice-President JD Vance made a rare appearance alongside Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and accused the Democrats of playing political games with the shutdown.
“If they are so worried about the effect this is having on the American people, and they should be, what they should do is reopen the government, not complain about how we respond,“ he said.
Leavitt, meanwhile, said mass job cuts would happen within two days. “Sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do,” she said, adding that “Democrats put us in this position”.
It was the latest dig in what has been a bitter blame game between both parties, with the top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer earlier accusing Republicans of trying to “bully” Democrats into accepting their funding plan.
Democrats want to secure guarantees on healthcare funding before they agree to a spending deal, while Republicans want to use a temporary stop-gap measure to keep the government open until mid-November and funded at current levels.
Democrats have said they allowed the government to shut down in an attempt to negotiate to save healthcare benefits for lower-income Americans. They have said efforts to negotiate with Republicans over these benefits have so far been unsuccessful.
“Why are they boycotting negotiations? I’ve never witnessed this in my life,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said of Republicans. “The matter is the government will open when Republicans get serious about it talking to Democrats.”
