Neither Senate Republicans nor Democrats could muster enough votes late Tuesday from the opposite party to pass a temporary spending measure to keep the government open in the new fiscal year, forcing federal offices and departments to shut down, with only essential employees coming on duty.

The Senate requires 60 votes to pass spending measures, so the 55 votes late Tuesday for the Republicans’ temporary spending measure that would keep the doors open for seven weeks while congressional negotiators seek agreement on a complete 2026 budget was insufficient. The Democrats’ alternative received only 47 votes.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told Fox News late Tuesday that he wants his chamber to make another attempt at passing the needed legislation on Wednesday, but Democratic leadership shows little willingness to change their position.

As a result, executive branch officials will tell all non-essential federal workers to stay home until the spending impasse is resolved, and the cost of that impasse will not be minor, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Budget experts at the CBO estimate that it will cost $400 million every day that furloughed non-essential civil service workers don’t come to work.

“Using information from the agencies’ contingency plans and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), CBO estimates that under a lapse in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2026 about 750,000 employees could be furloughed each day; the total daily cost of their compensation would be roughly $400 million,” CBO told Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in a September 30 letter.

“The number of furloughed employees could vary by the day because some agencies might furlough more employees the longer a shutdown persists and others might recall some initially furloughed employees,” CBO told Ernst. The CBO also pointed out that the costs of paying furloughed employees could be reduced if President Donald Trump proceeds with Reductions-In-Force (RIFs) of workers who are not considered essential.

“A reduction in the number of federal employees would reduce the daily cost of compensation for furloughed workers. Some agencies could use mandatory funding to decrease the number of workers they furlough. Doing so also would reduce the daily cost of compensation for furloughed workers,” CBO warned.

The analysis provided by CBO to the Iowa Republican, who requested it in a September 22 letter, was based on data compiled during the federal government’s previous “five-week partial shutdown from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019.” That shutdown followed the refusal of Democrats who controlled the House to agree to spending and policy measures backed by Trump and the Senate Republican majority.

Ernst told Senate colleagues in a floor speech after receiving the CBO estimate that “no one wins when Democrats shut down the government. It is obvious that [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.] is shutting down the government for one simple reason — to protect his own job. But that’s not even working. Just last week, the Washington newspaper Politico reported that across the country the Democratic base is rebelling against ‘Schumer’s rudderless leadership.’”

Ernst continued, arguing Schumer failed to do his part to ensure the government stays open and members of the U.S. military are paid, before declaring the Senate minority leader “the non-essential government employee of the year.”

The present shutdown threat stems from the fact the 2025 federal fiscal year ends at midnight on September 30, yet Congress has only approved three of the 12 major appropriations bills required to fund the 2026 fiscal year that begins on October 1.

House Republicans approved a continuing resolution (CR) on September 19 that would have kept the government open for the first seven weeks of the new fiscal year, thus affording Congress more time to complete work on the remaining nine appropriations bills. But the CR failed in the Senate because only the upper chamber’s 53 GOP lawmakers supported it. The Senate generally requires 60 votes to pass major legislation like spending bills.

Congressional leaders from both political parties met with Trump in the White House Monday but failed to reach an agreement on terms for a CR to avert a shutdown. Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill argue that Democrats will be responsible for the shutdown if it occurs because they have refused to negotiate in good faith.

Instead of the “clean CR” backed by Republicans that included no new spending, congressional Democrats are backing an alternative proposal that restores an estimated $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and policy reforms approved earlier this year by Congress under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2026.

The Democrats’ alternative was introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.). DeLauro is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, while Murray is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

An analysis by Matthew Dickerson, director of Budget Policy for the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), concluded that it “would continue discretionary appropriations through October 31, 2025. However, the DeLauro-Murray bill includes a number of policy provisions unrelated to continuing government funding. These provisions would increase government spending by nearly $1.5 trillion.”

Among much else, according to EPIC, the DeLauro-Murray bill permanently extends former President Joe Biden’s costly COVID pandemic-related tax credits at a cost of more than $383 million, while also creating a new inspector general position for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for $20 million — in addition to and increasing the government security budgets by almost $300 million.

But the biggest spending hike included in DeLauro-Murray is the measure’s repeal of more than $1.4 billion in cost-savings from health care reforms included in the OBBB. In a separate analysis published in August, EPIC’s Dickerson underscored, “Medicaid welfare spending has grown out of control, driven by waste, fraud, and abuse. Improper payments made by the Medicaid program alone have totaled $1.1 trillion over the last decade. The One Big Beautiful Bill makes important improvements to Medicaid to address these problems and deliver better care for truly vulnerable Americans.”