Connecticut lawmakers brace for government shutdown

WASHINGTON — Connecticut’s Democratic senators were standing their ground as the clock continued to tick down to a government shutdown midnight Friday.

“Americans see this self-inflicted, senseless dysfunction for what it is — and they know exactly who is at fault,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said in a tweet. “Republicans should listen to their constituents and work to avert a #TrumpShutdown before it’s too late.”

As the midnight deadline approached, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., scheduled votes at 10 p.m. on a measure passed Thursday night by the House. It would keep the government open through Feb. 16, the fourth such extension since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1 last year.

All day, Connecticut and the rest of the nation braced for what would be the first government shutdown since 2013, a shutdown that lasted 16 days.

Negotiations continued behind closed doors, but most of what the public was seeing and hearing amounted to little more than blame-game attack and avoidance.

The House measure contained few concessions to Democratic priorities, including continued legal status for the 700,000 or more youthful immigrants (more than 8,000 in Connecticut) who lost their status last year when President Trump ended then President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

With most Democrats — including Blumenthal and Sen. Chris Murphy — likely to oppose the Senate bill and two Republican senators saying they too would vote “no,” McConnell delayed a vote until just two hours before the deadline.

Earlier, President Donald Trump called Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer to the White House for a negotiating session that included White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

“We had a long and detailed meeting,” Schumer told reporters upon his return to the U.S. Capitol. “We discussed all of the major outstanding issues, we made some progress, but we still have a good number of disagreements. The discussions will continue.”

Trump tweeted his encounter with Schumer was an “excellent preliminary meeting.”

He added: “Making progress — four week extension would be best!”

The president canceled a planned trip Friday to his Mar a Lago resort in Florida to be on hand for last-minute negotiations.

As the blame game ricocheted back and forth, an ABC News/ Washington Post poll showed 48 percent would judge Republicans guilty if a shutdown occurred, while 28 percent would accuse Democrats and 18 percent believe both sides equally responsible.

But a CNN poll showed 56 percent saying avoidance of a shutdown is more important than continuing the DACA program, while just 34 percent picked DACA over a shutdown.

Murphy took aim at the prospect of another temporary fix, retweeting the Pentagon’s top spokeswoman who said the succession of such spending measures was “wasteful and destructive” for the military.

“This is extraordinary,” Murphy tweeted. “What a first class mess Republicans have created.”

Republicans and conservatives were going all out to pin the possible shutdown on Democrats. As a counter to the hashtag #TrumpShutdown, they rolled out the hashtag #SchumerShutdown.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney pushed back against Democrats like Blumenthal who have argued that, as the ones in control of Congress and the White House, Republicans would own the shutdown.

He also insisted that there was no need to include a DACA fix as a condition for keeping the government open.

“DACA doesn't expire until March 5,” Mulvaney said. “This is purely an attempt by the Senate Democrats … to try and get a shutdown that they think this President gets blamed for.”

Advocates for DACA Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to this country as children, say the legal status of at least 15,000 people has already expired. But a federal judge in California put a hold on deportation proceedings against them, pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenged Trump’s DACA revocation. The Trump administration has appealed the judge’s stay to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Anyone who says that we have more time for this insane congressional gridlock is lying,” said Lucas Codognolla, himself a Dreamer from Brazil who heads Connecticut Students for a Dream. “Every day I meet DACA recipients, students, young parents, workers who support their families, who have already lost their DACA. They can't wait until March 5.”