US government in shutdown as midnight deadline passes

International Desk: The United States has its first government shutdown in nearly five years after senators failed to reach a deal to keep the lights on.

An effort by Republicans to keep the government open for one month was rejected in a vote on Friday night after they failed to address Democratic concerns about young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

Republicans needed 60 votes to advance the bill but the legislation only received the support of 50 senators. Five red state Democrats broke ranks to support the bill while four Republicans voted against.

But 12.00am ET came and went without a deal, causing funding for the federal government to lapse. Federal law requires agencies to shut down if Congress has not appropriated money to fund them. Hundreds of thousands of “non-essential” federal employees will be put on temporary unpaid leave. In previous shutdowns, services deemed “essential”, such as the work of the homeland security and the FBI, have continued.

Speaking on the floor after the vote, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell assailed the shutdown as the result of a “cynical decision by the Democrats”. His opposite number, minority leader Chuck Schumer, delivered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump, blaming the president for the shutdown. The New York Democrat said Trump “walked away from two bipartisan deals” and that “a Trump shutdown will serve as a perfect encapsulation for the chaos he has unleashed”.

A White House statement issued just before midnight said “this is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators”.

Democrats earlier blamed Republican divisions for the failure of the vote. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said lawmakers from his rival party were not on the same page as president Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the House had voted by a margin of 230-197 to advance the bill after speaker Paul Ryan made concessions to conservative Republicans in the Freedom Caucus. These included a vote on increased military funding, a potential vote on a hardline immigration bill and other “subplots”, which Mark Meadows, the head of the Freedom Caucus, declined to share with reporters. The vote was almost entirely along party lines, with only six Democrats and 11 Republicans breaking ranks.

The bill did not contain any provisions to protect Dreamers, which has been a key Democratic priority since Donald Trump announced in September that he was rescinding an Obama-era program, known as Daca. The programenabled young, undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to obtain temporary legal status.

After the bill passed the House, Ryan preemptively tried to blame Democrats for any government shutdown, telling reporters: “The only people standing in the way of keeping the government open are Senate Democrats.”

In a final dash to avert a shutdown, Trump cancelled plans to depart for his Mar-a-lago resort in Florida, where the president was due to celebrate the anniversary of his first year in office. Instead, Trump spent the day negotiating with congressional leaders.

But despite hosting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon, the sides were unable to reach an agreement.

Trump and Schumer, who both hail from New York, negotiated over cheeseburgers in a small dining room adjacent to the Oval Office.

A source briefed on the meeting said Schumer offered not only to meet Trump’s full funding request for a border wall, but also agreed to boosting defense spending “far above” what the White House had requested.

In exchange, Schumer requested a short-term measure that would keep the government open for just a few days, in the hopes of keeping pressure on lawmakers to reach a broader compromise. The president even seemed amenable to Schumer’s approach, the source said, and told the Democratic leader he would broach the topic with Republican leaders.

But not long after Schumer returned to the Capitol, he received a phone call from John Kelly, the White House chief of staff. Kelly, who emerged as an unexpected hardliner on immigration, informed Schumer the contours of the deal he discussed with Trump were too liberal.

Source: theguardian.com


risingbd/Dhaka/Jan 20, 2018/Nasim