STILL GOING – Vehicles are parked outside a Bureau of the Fiscal Service facility in Parkersburg Wednesday. The president of a union representing many local employees at the bureau said most were on the job as usual despite the federal government shutdown. -- Evan Bevins

CHARLESTON — Attempts by both Republican and Democratic U.S. senators to end an impasse on federal government funding that started a shutdown of services Wednesday failed for a second day.

The Senate voted 55-45 Wednesday afternoon on a motion to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed with a vote on the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, the continuing resolution passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives that would have funded the federal government at current levels through Nov. 21.

While the motion received a majority of yes votes, it needed 60 to move to full consideration by the Senate. A similar vote in the Senate Tuesday night also failed in a 55-45 vote. The short-term CR needed to pass Tuesday in order to keep the federal government funded for the new federal fiscal year that began Wednesday and give lawmakers more time to pass appropriations bills for the current fiscal year.

The Senate also voted 47-53 against a motion to invoke cloture to consider a separate proposal from the Democratic minority for a continuing resolution that also included an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies – put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic – that are set to expire on Dec. 31. Senate Democrats are refusing to consider the House resolution without extension of the ACA subsidies.

The Senate is not expected to vote again on any continuing resolutions until Friday, with the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur taking place from sundown Wednesday through sundown Thursday. That means non-essential government services will remain closed and many federal employees will continue to go unpaid until a resolution is passed.

West Virginia is home to more than 30 federal facilities, including the National Energy Technology Laboratory and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services office in Clarksburg, NASA’s Katherine Johnson IV and I Facility in Fairmont, IRS facilities in Beckley and Kearneysville, and Veterans Affairs facilities in Huntington, Clarksburg and Martinsburg.

There wasn’t much evidence of disruption as a result of the shutdown in Parkersburg on Wednesday. The Internal Revenue Service’s Taxpayer Assistance Center in the former Union Trust building on Market Street remained open, and a local union official said it was mostly “business as usual” for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

“We’ve never been impacted locally, Parkersburg, when it comes to a government shutdown,” said the president of National Treasury Employees Union 190.

Activities like human resources procurement and securities auction are considered essential services, he said.

“We’re literally about a 98 percent, 99 percent essential,” he said. “We show up, we work, and it’s business as usual.”

During a press conference Wednesday with Senate and House Republican leadership, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito accused her Democratic colleagues of holding the nation hostage by not passing the House resolution and negotiating with Republicans toward a permanent fix.

“The American people are being held hostage, and the process has been totally hijacked,” said Capito, R-W.Va. “We’ve heard repeatedly how simple, how nonpartisan, how easy the bill that (Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.) has showed us today is in terms of keeping the government open, how easy that is to vote for to give us the seven weeks to work out our differences.”

In a press release Wednesday morning, West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Pushkin, a state delegate, said West Virginians who pay for health insurance through the ACA marketplace could see their premiums increase next year if the Senate Democratic resolution is not passed, with some losing their coverage altogether.

President “Donald Trump and West Virginia Republicans refused to negotiate and ensure that health care expenses don’t double for 49,000 families, who are already struggling under Donald Trump’s economy,” said Pushkin, D-Kanawha. “While Republicans refuse to even show up to work, Democrats stand united: Cancel the cuts, lower costs and save health care for hard-working West Virginians. Trump is playing politics with West Virginians’ livelihoods. Democrats won’t stop fighting to lower costs and save health care.”

Capito, the fourth ranking member of Senate Republican majority leadership and a subcommittee chairwoman on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said senators have worked on long-term government funding packages over the last several months. To date, Senate committees have recommended eight funding bills for passage out of 12, with three passed by the full Senate. She criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for not putting appropriation bills on the floor when he was majority leader.

“The process of appropriating has been hijacked,” Capito said. “And that’s fine for the Democrats, because last year, Chuck Schumer did not put one single appropriations bill on the Senate floor. Our leader (Thune) has put three on the Senate floor and our committee has passed eight bills out of appropriations. That’s the process to get the will of the American people, where their priorities are, where they want to see us as a nation go with spending their hard-earned tax dollars.

“They’ve hijacked a process that we need to have in order to demonstrate to the American people what we promised them in this election and what President Trump promised them,” Capito continued. “We’re going to go back to regular order. We’re going to appropriate the dollars. We’re going to be fully transparent. …We’re going to put our own imprint on this for the American people. That’s what they wanted when they voted us in and that’s what we’re going to give them.”

(Evan Bevins contributed to this story.)