Trump campaign ad: Democrats ‘complicit’ in murders by immigrants
Senate vote on funding measure to 8 February due by 1am Monday
As the second day of the US government shutdown wore on, there appeared little sign of progress as both parties continued to blame each other.
Donald Trump used Twitter to urge Senate Republicans to end the impasse by taking the “nuclear option” if the “stalemate continues”.
Such a move would allow Republicans to pass legislation without Democratic support, by lowering the majority needed to pass a bill to just 51 votes. It is, however, not an option favoured by the GOP Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.
The president continued to blame Democrats for the shutdown, arguing that they were placing the nation’s borders under threat by opposing a short-term budget fix.
“The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked,” Trump tweeted.
What is a government shutdown?
When the US Congress fails to pass appropriate funding for government operations and agencies, a shutdown is triggered. Most government services are frozen, barring those that are deemed “essential”, such as the work of the Department of Homeland Security and FBI. During a shutdown, nearly 40% of the government workforce is placed on unpaid furlough and told not to work. Many, but not all, are non-defense federal employees. Active duty military personnel are not furloughed.
Why is the government poised to shut down?
Members of Congress are at an impasse over what should be included in a spending bill to keep the government open. Democrats have insisted any compromise must also include protections for the nearly 700,000 young, undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the US as children.
The Dreamers, who were granted temporary legal status under Barack Obama, were newly exposed to the threat of deportation when Donald Trump moved to rescind their protections in September.
Trump and Republicans have argued immigration is a separate issue and can be dealt with at a later time.
How common is a shutdown?
There have been 12 government shutdowns in the US since 1981, although ranging in duration. The longest occurred under Bill Clinton, lasting a total of 21 days from December 1995 to January 1996, when the then House speaker, Newt Gingrich, demanded sharp cuts to government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and welfare.
The most recent shutdown transpired under Obama in 2013, pitting the president against the Republican-led House of Representatives. Republicans refused to support a spending bill that included funding for Obama’s healthcare law, resulting in a 16-day shutdown that at its peak affected 850,000 federal employees.
What would be the cost of a shutdown?
A government shutdown would cost the US roughly $6.5bn a week, according to a report by S&P Global analysts. “A disruption in government spending means no government paychecks to spend; lost business and revenue to private contractors; lost sales at retail shops, particularly those that circle now-closed national parks; and less tax revenue for Uncle Sam,” the report stated. “That means less economic activity and fewer jobs.”
Nearly 1 million people would not receive regular paychecks in the event of a shutdown. In previous shutdowns, furloughed employees have been paid retrospectively – but those payments have often been delayed.
Sabrina Siddiqui
Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America
The remarks followed an agressive Trump campaign advert released on Saturday, which said Democrats opposing the president’s hardline immigration agenda were “complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants”.
Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, told NBC’s Meet the Press “that ad was produced by an outside group and not those of us in the White House”.
The ad concludes with a picture of the president giving two thumbs up and his voice saying: “I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message.”
The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders condemned the ad.
“It is really unbelievable and so sad for our country that we have a president of the United States who says such nonsense and such outrageous statements,” Sanders told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is helping lead efforts to secure talks safeguards for Dreamers, young undocumented migrants brought to the US who gained protected status under the Obama administration that was rescinded by Trump.
Republicans have argued that as Trump set a March deadline for a resolution to the Dreamers issue, negotiations can continue after government funding is passed.
Although the president remained in Washington over the weekend, missing a gala event at his private members’ club in Florida to celebrate his first year in office, Trump faced criticism for failing to lead negotiations since the shutdown began.
News shows repeated Fox and Friends footage from 2013, when Republicans in Congress drove the last government shutdown, over healthcare reform.
“Well, if you say who gets fired it always has to be the top,” Trump said then. “I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top and the president’s the leader. And he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead.”
On Saturday the White House released a photograph of the president sitting in the Oval Office, wearing a white Make America Great Again cap and surrounded by flags as he purportedly received “the latest updates from Capitol Hill”.
It was later reported that Trump had not been in contact with the Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, since they negotiated over a cheeseburger lunch on Friday. Schumer said on Saturday that working with Trump was like “negotiating with Jell-O”.
Both the House and the Senate reconvened on Sunday afternoon, with McConnell aiming to schedule for the early hours of Monday another vote on short-term funding, to reopen the government until 8 February.
In a Senate floor speech, Schumer said he had “essentially agreed to give the president something he wants” – funding for a border wall – “for something we both want”, status for Dreamers. It was now up to the president, he said, to end what he repeatedly called “the Trump shutdown”.
Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, said the lower chamber would accept the 8 February measure but admitted there was no consensus on whether it could pass.
“We’re basically waiting to see today if the Senate will vote on this or not,” Ryan said.
On Saturday evening, Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican senator who with others spent the day shuttling between Senate offices in pursuit of progress, said he believed the 8 February resolution would succeed.
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told reporters there was “certainly a real possibility [of a deal] if there’s good faith on both sides”.
The shutdown began at midnight on Friday, after Senate Democrats derailed a House-passed funding measure that would have run through 16 February.
They did so by preventing Republicans who control the chamber reaching the 60-vote tally that means blocking mechanisms cannot be used. Five red-state Democrats voted for the funding measure but a handful of conservative Republicans voted against it.
Whitehouse said Friday night produced “the first real serious negotiations about this [spending bill] which only happened because of the vote result”.
But in an indication of the frustration felt on both sides, the Kentucky senator Rand Paul, a Republican who voted against the bill, bemoaned to CNN on Sunday “gamesmanship and partisanship” by both parties.
Nonetheless the blame game continued on Sunday morning, with the White House leading the charge.
Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, supported the president’s call for Senate Republicans to exercise the “nuclear option” if the standoff continued, and said Senate Democrats were “dysfunctional”.
The public will not feel the full effect of the shutdown until the work week begins on Monday. Non-essential federal workers are likely to be told to take unpaid leave.
National parks remained open although in New York City the Statue of Liberty was closed. Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would seek funding to have it reopened. It was also announced that US military members overseas would after all be able to watch Sunday’s NFL championship play-offs.
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