Good evening. I'm John Yang. Whatever optimism there may have been that lawmakers would reach a deal this weekend to end the longest government shutdown on record has faded.

As Senate Democrats demand a one-year extension of Affordable Care Act insurance premium subsidies, President Trump floated an idea of his own.

Terminate per dollar spent the worst health care anywhere in the

world, Obamacare. That's clearly an on-starter for Democrats. The Senate held its first Saturday

session since the 39-day shutdown began, but no votes were scheduled. Tonight, we're following

two of the most widespread effects felt by Americans, air travel and nutrition benefits.

On the second day of reduced flights at 40 airports, the aviation data company, Sirium, said nearly 4% of flights were canceled, and about 2.5% have been canceled for tomorrow.

Randy Babbitt was FAA administrator in the Obama administration.

Mr. Babbitt, is this working, are reduced flights, reducing delays?

No, they're reducing the flights for the primary purpose and a good purpose of making the system safe.

They're suffering a loss of controllers at the various stations.

They're not interchangeable. And to ensure the

system operates safely, you just have to reduce traffic down to the level of the number of

controllers you can put up. Is this sustainable? No, it's actually going to continue to accelerate

in the wrong direction. The longer we ask people to work without a paycheck, the longer we ask

people to work 10, 12, 14-hour shifts, you just can't sustain that. People are calling in sick.

They're tired. It's an intense job. The controllers are well-trained. And there's a lot of stress

in that job. And you can't keep doing it. We have the staffing levels where they were for a good reason, and we're not achieving that level of controllers, you know, on site and on their stations.

I'm going to go back to the point you point made about controllers not being interchangeable.

It's not that you can sort of see how many controllers are working nationwide. It depends on each airport, each air traffic control center.

Oh, absolutely. There's a big difference between being an en route controller or a tower controller or an approach control person. Those are different jobs. And they're not interchangeable. Someone who's working in route

cannot go the next morning and be in the Richmond Tower. You know, it takes months of training

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