WASHINGTON — Nonessential federal services – including those in Buffalo – closed indefinitely Wednesday morning amid yet another congressional budget battle.
The new federal fiscal year began at midnight, but Congress hasn’t passed any of the 12 spending bills necessary to fund the government. Meanwhile, work on a seven-week stopgap measure went nowhere after the Trump administration and the Republican congressional majority refused to agree to Democratic demands to protect health care funding.
Characteristically, each side blamed the other.
“House Republicans did our job,” said Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican who represents a district that sprawls eastward from Niagara County to the Watertown area. “We passed a clean, bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open, protect paychecks for our troops, Border Patrol agents, TSA officers and air traffic controllers, while ensuring essential services continue for the American people. Democrats chose political theater over the people they represent and voted to shut the government down.”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – who leads the caucus that blocked the temporary funding bill – pinned the shutdown on the GOP.
“It’s midnight,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a social media post early this morning, with the U.S. Capitol in the background. “The Republican shutdown has just begun because Republicans wouldn’t protect America’s health care. We are going to keep fighting for the American people.”
The budget fight is not so much about the fiscal 2026 budget as it is about the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the massive tax and reform bill passed by Republicans this summer. That measure cuts future funding for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and Senate Democrats – who can prevent most measures from getting the required 60-vote majority – are demanding that those cuts be reversed in any new spending plan.
While the budget drama transfixed Washington, it will have little immediate noticeable impact in Buffalo and many other parts of the country.
Social Security payments will continue, although applications for new benefits will be delayed. Medicare and veterans health care programs will continue, too.
Federal air traffic controllers will keep working because they are deemed “essential,” although they won’t get paid for the time being. The same goes for the customs officers who staff the Canadian border as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel who are enacting President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Other services will be affected, though. New applications for federal food assistance, be it Supplemental Nutrition Assistance or the Women, Infants and Children program, will be frozen in place. And National Park Service sites such as the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historical Site will be closed.
Ironically, though, the shutdown probably won’t be a money-saver, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
“While estimates vary widely, evidence suggests that shutdowns tend to cost – not save – money for several reasons, including costly contingency plans, contract premiums, guaranteed back pay for many federal employees and economic costs,” the organization said on X.
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Jerry Zremski
Washington bureau
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