U.S. federal gov't facing shutdown threat again

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday failed to pass a stopgap funding bill proposed by Republicans, pushing the federal government to the edge of shutdown.

The federal government will suffer another shutdown if Congress fails to pass the bill to maintain current funding levels by Friday.

The funding bill to avoid a government shutdown was rejected twice by the Senate by 45-55 and 40-59. It needs 60 votes to pass.

Majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky, said that Democratic leaders rejected the bill for the sake of "election-year politics."

Democrats said they held the bill because they wanted to add money to help residents who have been affected by lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan.

The bill has already included 1.1 billion U.S. dollars to fight Zika and millions to help flood victims in Louisiana, West Virginia and Maryland.

Affected by increasing brinkmanship within Washington politics in recent years, approving funding bills has become more and more difficult for the federal government. The federal government was forced to shut down from Oct. 1 to 16 in 2013 as Congress didn't pass the appropriating funds for the fiscal year 2014. Endi