‘Twas 4 days before Christmas as Trump chaos hit the Capitol
WASHINGTON >> ‘Twas four days before Christmas, and all through the House — and Senate — not a shutdown solution was stirring and lawmakers, they did grouse.
The chaos that is President Donald Trump’s White House seemed to engulf the Capitol on Friday. While the workings of Congress are often tumultuous, especially as adjournment nears, things seemed even more out of kilter than usual as a partial government shutdown loomed just hours away.
Senators who’d gleefully left town earlier this week thinking their year’s work was done flew glumly back for votes they hoped would keep agencies from shuttering at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. The usually laconic Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., left a meeting with GOP senators to eagerly show reporters a button that said, “Senate Cranky Coalition.”
Virtually all senators, McConnell said, “are a part of this coalition. Yeah, almost unanimous agreement.”
None traveled further for more fleeting gratification than Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz, who flew home to Hawaii, treated his Twitter followers to a selfie capturing part of his 17 minutes with his family, then zoomed back to Washington.
“Wheels down IAD ready to vote no on this stupid wall,” he tweeted at dawn as his plane landed at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
Another senator, Republican Mike Rounds, said he’d been home in South Dakota for four hours Thursday when he learned he’d need to head back to Washington. He was among several senators from both parties who said they left Washington after being given the impression that the House would approve a Senatepassed bill keeping government open and that Trump would sign it.
“We figured they would have a battle, show that they were not happy about it but would move forward,” Rounds said.
House members were also in town Friday and lawmakers did not know when they’d be able to leave for Christmas and New Year’s Day. As if symbolizing the Capitol’s dampened holiday spirit, a worker was seen hauling away a Christmas tree, wrapped in plastic, in a blue recycling dumpster.
Friday afternoon, top administration officials met in the Capitol meeting with congressional leaders in hopes of resolving the standoff. To kill time, the Senate kept a procedural roll call vote open for more than four hours. The House alternated between long recesses and votes on minor bills, including one renaming the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge in Florida as the Nathaniel P. Reed Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge.
In this latest version of Congress’ increasingly frequent shutdown showdowns, the sore spot was Trump’s demand for $5 billion in taxpayer money to start building a border wall he’s repeatedly said Mexico would finance.
Aware of polls showing the wall and a shutdown over it are widely disliked except