US Vice President J.D. Vance warned of further workforce cuts on top of the thousands of jobs already eliminated if the government shutdown is not resolved.
“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts will be,” Vance told Fox News. “To be clear, some of these cuts will be painful.”
Democrats said Republicans were punishing people by refusing to include health insurance subsidies in the spending bill.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are already on unpaid leave as the shutdown approaches its third week. No congressional vote is scheduled to reopen the government.
The standoff began Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding bill. They want the budget to include an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
The Trump administration announced Friday that seven agencies, including the CDC, have begun dismissal of more than 4,000 employees.
But some of those CDC termination notices were sent in error, a spokesman for the US Department of Health, which oversees the CDC, told the BBC.
Those CDC employees “have all been notified that they are not being made redundant,” Andrew Nixon said.
Of the roughly 1,300 CDC workers laid off on Friday, about 700 were reinstated on Saturday, the workers' union told CNN.
Essential workers, such as federal law enforcement officers and air traffic controllers, are required to continue working without pay.
But the Trump administration is making an exception for some essential workers: U.S. military personnel.
Trump tasked Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with finding affordable funds to pay military personnel this week, and Hegseth was up to the task.
The Ministry of Defense will take about $8 billion (£6 billion) from “non-mandated research and development, test and evaluation funds” to pay military personnel on October 15 if the funding problem is not resolved, a Pentagon spokesman told the BBC.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., toeed the Democratic line Sunday, saying on NBC's “Meet the Press” that he won't back down from his party's demand to restore federal health care subsidies now, not later.
As for the firings, Kelly said Republicans “don't have to do that, they don't have to punish people.”
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on NBC's “Meet the Press” that he will not vote to extend the subsidies.
Vance blamed Democrats for talking to Fox, saying, “This is not a situation we like. [these layoffs] “It's not something we're looking forward to, but the Democrats have dealt us a pretty tough set of cards.”
As lawmakers continue to fight over the budget, more government services are feeling the effects of the shutdown.
Several Smithsonian museums, research centers and the National Zoo in Washington closed Sunday after funding for their operations ran out.
