Vance warns the longer the shutdown goes on, ‘the deeper the cuts are going to be’

Vance warned that as the federal shutdown entered its 12th day, new cuts would be “painful,” even as he said the Trump administration worked to ensure military payrolls were paid this week and some services for low-income Americans would be maintained, including food aid.

However, hundreds of thousands of government employees have been furloughed in recent days, and in a lawsuit Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said more than 4,000 federal employees will soon be furloughed in conjunction with the shutdown.

“The longer this goes on, the more cuts there will be,” Vance said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “To be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is a situation we enjoy. This is not something we are looking forward to, but Democrats have dealt us a very difficult set of cards.”

Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the aggressive move by President Donald Trump’s budget office, which goes far beyond what typically occurs in a government shutdown, further inflaming tensions between Republicans who control Congress and minority Democrats.

The shutdown began on October 1 after Democrats rejected short-term funding reform and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal support for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The expiration of this support at the end of the year will result in monthly cost increases of millions.

Trump and Republican leaders have said they are open to negotiations over health benefits, but insist the government must reopen first.

At the moment, negotiations are almost non-existent. As always, House leaders from both parties pointed fingers at each other in their competing appearances Sunday on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have made clear time and time again that we will sit down with anyone, anytime, anywhere,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It is unfortunate that they have taken the high road approach.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson blamed Democrats and said they “don’t seem to care” about the pain the shutdown is causing.

“They are doing everything they can to distract the American people from the simple fact that they have chosen a partisan fight so they can prove to their rising Marxist base in the Democratic Party that they are willing to fight Trump and the Republicans,” he said.

Meanwhile, progressive activists expressed new support for the Democratic Party’s position in the shutdown battle.

Ezra Levin, co-founder of the leading progressive protest group Indivisible, said he “feels good about the strength of the Democrats’ position.” He pointed to divisions in the Republican Party, noting that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly warned last week that health care insurance premiums would rise dramatically for ordinary Americans — including her adult children — if nothing was done.

“Trump and the Republican Party rightly bear the blame for the shutdown and the looming premium increases,” Levin said. “Their chickens come home to roost.”

However, the Republican administration and its allies in Congress show no signs of giving in to Democratic demands or backing down on threats to seize the opportunity to pursue deeper federal workforce cuts.

Thousands of employees at the Departments of Education, Treasury, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, are scheduled to receive layoff notices, according to agency spokespeople and federal labor union representatives.

“You hear a lot of Senate Democrats saying, ‘Well, how can Donald Trump lay off all these federal employees?’ Vance said. “Well, Democrats have given us a choice between, on the one hand, giving low-income women their food benefits and paying our troops, and on the other hand, paying federal bureaucrats.”

Democrats say the firings are illegal and unnecessary.

“They don’t have to,” Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They don’t have to punish people who shouldn’t find themselves in that situation.”

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