RIPS TRUMP’S IMAGE
bogged down in yet another crisis in his short presidency after he was unable to avert a government shutdown.
His failure to win passage by the US Congress of a stopgap bill to keep funds flowing to the federal government further damaged his self-crafted image as a dealmaker who would repair the broken culture here.
Even as the White House began pointing the finger at Democrats on Friday in a steady messaging effort, blame for the shutdown was also directed at the Republican president.
“It’s almost like you were rooting for a shutdown,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of Trump after the Senate refused to approve a shutdown-averting funding bill.
Trump, who in July 2016 said, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” also said past government shutdowns were the fault of the person in the White House.
In a Fox & Friends interview after a 2013 shutdown, he said then-president Barack Obama was ultimately responsible.
As this new shutdown, the first since 2013, started looking increasingly likely on Friday, Trump made a last-ditch effort to behave as the kind of problemsolver he claimed to be. non-profit National Parks Conservation Association.
In 2013, popular tourist sites, such as the Smithsonian. were closed. The Trump administration did not plan to barricade open-air monuments this time, officials said.
The Internal Revenue Service furloughed 90 per cent of its staff in 2013, the liberal Center for American Progress said. About US$4 billion (RM15.7 billion) in tax refunds were delayed as a result, said the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The Administrative Office of the US Courts said Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court, could continue to operate for about three weeks without additional funding.
In 2013, the Medicare health insurance programme for the elderly continued without disruption. Hundreds of patients could
First, he postponed a weekend trip to his winter home Mar-aLago, where a lavish US$100,000a-couple (RM390,000) fundraiser yesterday would extol his first year in office.
Then, Trump invited Schumer to a meeting at the White House on Friday afternoon. The idea was to find some common ground.
Both Trump and Schumer afterward spoke of progress, but the president reverted to the same stance he and other White House officials had taken earlier in the day: if a resolution were to be reached, it would have to involve the Senate passing a fourweek funding extension passed on Thursday by the House.
Schumer had pressed for a short-term bill and he said he even put on the table funding for Trump’s wall along the American-Mexican not enrol in National Institutes of Health clinical trials, according to the OMB. A programme at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to track flu outbreaks was temporarily halted in 2013. This time, CDC would continue its work to track the flu outbreak, an official said.
Six Head Start programmes in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina serving 6,300 children shut for nine days in 2013, the OMB said.
Social Security and disability checks were issued in 2013 with no change in payment dates and field offices remained open but offered limited services. There were delays in the review process for new applicants.
Processing of mortgages and other loans was delayed when lenders could not access government services, such as income border.
Trump had repeatedly linked wall funding to Democrats’ goal of a deal to preserve legal protections, under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants that came to the US as children with their parents.
By early evening, despite Schumer ’s offer to discuss the wall, White House aides reiterated that the New York senator’s proposal was a non-starter, leaving both sides as far apart as ever.
“He did not press his party to accept it, said Schumer.
The day seemed part of a familiar pattern that has driven Democrats to distraction. Trump first courts their support and suggests flexibility, only to pivot and side with more conservative lawmakers. Reuters and social security number verification. The Small Business Administration was unable to process 700 applications for US$140 million in loans until the shutdown ended, OMB said.
Most employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs would not be subject to furlough. The department’s hospitals would remain open and veterans’ benefits would continue, but education assistance and case appeals would be delayed, the department said.
Department of Agriculture meat inspectors stayed on the job. Agricultural statistical reports ceased publication.
The Department of Energy said on Friday that since most of its appropriations were for multiple years, employees should report to work as normal during a shutdown until told otherwise. Reuters