Pay freeze adds to shutdown impasse
A pay freeze for two million federal workers ordered by President Donald Trump has further dimmed prospects of a resolution to the government shutdown now in its second week.
The Democrats were handed fresh ammunition to hurl at Trump, who they say is to blame for forcing 800,000 public employees to miss pay cheques because he refused to sign off on a government budget unless it included billions of dollars for a wall on the southern US border.
Under the new pay freeze federal civilian workers will also be denied a 2.1 per cent rise that Congress has proposed for the new year. It will not affect the military as their funding is passed by the Pentagon.
Congress and the White House remain far apart on the issue. Insiders say that despite cancelling his Christmas holiday Trump has done little negotiating on the issue.
Richard Shelby, the Republican chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, revealed that he had not spoken to Trump since the shutdown began on December 22. Instead the president has been active on Twitter as he seeks to place blame on the Democrats.
Trump inflamed tensions on Sunday when he accused his opponents of being responsible for the death of an eightyear-old Guatemalan boy after he was detained by a border patrol. It was the second death of a child in US custody in three weeks.
Trump wrote: ‘‘Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try!’’ he said.
Yet the majority of Americans blame Trump, rather than the Democrats, for the shutdown, according to the most recent Reuters-Ispos poll.
The president rejected a stop-gap measure passed by the Senate before the Christmas break to keep funding the government at present levels. A more recent proposal to give the president $2 billion (NZ$2.9b) for the wall this year and $2.5b next year, instead of the $5.6b he is demanding in 2019, was rejected by the Democrats.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican South Carolina senator, told CNN: ‘‘At the end of the day there’s a deal to be had, but everybody’s changing their position here and most Americans are pretty tired of it.’’ Nevertheless he added: ‘‘There’ll never be a deal without wall funding.’’
The prospect of reaching a budget deal with the White House is likely to dim still further later this week, when the Democrats take over as the majority party in the House of Representatives. The Democrats are united in their opposition to the wall but there are divisions among Republicans over Trump’s approach to immigration.
In his first interview since announcing his departure from the White House, John Kelly, the outgoing chief of staff, said that the way to stop the migrant crisis was to ‘‘stop US demand for drugs, and expand economic opportunity’’ in Central America.
Trump has said that he would stop aid to Central American governments as punishment for illegal immigration, as well as building the wall.