Congress facing shutdown over budget deal
Republican senator blocks own party’s attempts to speed up vote on funding bill
WASHINGTON— A short government shutdown was assured as the Senate recessed until just after a Thursday midnight deadline to pass a temporary funding bill. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul sparked the shutdown after blocking repeated attempts by GOP leaders to speed up a vote on the stopgap funding bill, which is attached to a huge bipartisan budget agreement.
Paul was protesting that the bill would usher in the return of trilliondollar budget deficits.
The Senate was expected to vote to reopen the government in the wee hours Friday. A House vote would follow, but it was also possible that federal agencies would have to implement temporary shutdown plans if clearing the funding bill takes too long.
Essential government functions will continue regardless.
In the hours leading to the deadline, U.S. congressional leaders scrambled to rally support for the sweeping half-trillion-dollar spending deal amid last-minute objections from Paul, and attacks from left and right in the House.
White House Office of Management and Budget spokesperson John Czwartacki said that “agencies are now being urged to review and prepare for lapse” in spending after midnight.
Paul, making use of Senate rules that give individual senators enormous power to slow down proceedings that often require the consent of all, demanded a vote on his amendment that would demonstrate how the two-year budget deal breaks past pledges to rein in federal spending.
“I can’t in all good honesty, in all good faith, just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits,” Paul said on the Senate floor as evening pushed into night, after objecting as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to move to a vote.
Paul then launched into a lengthy floor speech deriding bipartisan complicity on deficit spending while the country goes “on and on and on finding new wars to fight that make no sense.” Paul predicted a “day of reckoning,” possibly in the form of the collapse of the stock market.
Senate leaders remained confident the spending deal would pass easily in the end.
Even bigger problems appeared to be surfacing in the House, where liberals led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were incensed that the plight of young undocumented immigrants who face the threat of depor- tation was not addressed in the spending bill.
Pelosi planned to vote against the bill, and despite initially suggesting that she would not be urging fellow Democrats to follow her lead, she increasingly appeared to be doing exactly that.
At a closed-door evening meeting of House Democrats, Pelosi told lawmakers: “We have a moment. They don’t have the votes. All of us should use our leverage. This is what we believe in,” according to one House Democrat in the room, who demanded anonymity to disclose the private conversation.
Pelosi is under intense pressure from immigrant activists and liberals in her caucus to take a stand for the “dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children who face losing work permits granted by former U.S. president Barack Obama but rescinded by his successor, Donald Trump.
Supporters of these immigrants have watched in growing outrage as Democrats have failed repeatedly to achieve results for the cause.
They want to see Democrats stand strong, even after a three-day partial government shutdown over the issue last month failed to achieve more than a commitment from McConnell to debate the issue on the Senate floor. But many House Democrats are skittish over forcing another shutdown after the last one failed to yield much, especially with Senate Democrats largely on board for the spending deal. Minority Leader Charles Schumer negotiated the package with McConnell, with input from Pelosi and Speaker Paul Ryan.
“It’s split in there, but not everybody has expressed their point of view,” Rep. Jackie Speier said.
House conservatives were also balking, objecting to the enormous increase in federal spending, most of which would be piled onto the deficit with minimal attempts to offset it.
Earlier Thursday, Ryan expressed confidence that the bill, which delivers a military funding boost sought by the GOP alongside increases in domestic spending favoured by Democrats, would pass.