National Post (National Edition)
Stalled talks push U.S. shutdown standoff into the new year
‘FEDERAL EMPLOYEES DON’T GO TO WORK WEARING RED OR BLUE JERSEYS’
Congress effectively gave up on trying to reopen a quarter of the U.S. federal government until after the new year, as negotiations stalled Thursday among Republican and Democratic leaders.
House members were told they would not be expected back for votes this week, and the Senate was expected to follow suit, according to Democratic and Republican aides. That would hand the job of reopening the U.S. federal government to Democrats when they take control of the House in January.
President Donald Trump did not appear in public Thursday and leadership offices were shuttered on Capitol Hill amid the standoff on the president’s demand for billions of dollars to fund a border wall that Democrats oppose.
Trump on Thursday claimed that “most of the people not getting paid” in the partial government shutdown are Democrats, days after he contended that many federal workers support his call for more border wall funding.
Trump made the claim in a morning tweet as the shutdown entered its sixth day, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed without pay. The shutdown intensifies a standoff between the president, who saw the final days of the year as his last chance to try to extract funding for a border wall, and Democrats, who showed no signs of buckling.
About 25 per cent of the federal government has been shut down since Saturday, with roughly 800,000 workers affected, including an estimated 350,000 who are on furlough at home without pay. At the heart of the stalemate is Trump’s demand for US$5 billion in funding for his proposed wall at the U.s.mexico border.
Congressional Democrats have rejected that figure and made counteroffers for border security of as much as US$1.6 billion.
But the two sides remain deadlocked, and it appears unlikely that a resolution will come before the week is out.
With no end to the shutdown in sight, the Office of Personnel Management sent out a Twitter posting Thursday morning in which it shared advice and letter templates for federal workers to use in negotiating for deferred rent and payments to other creditors.
“As we discussed, I am a Federal employee who has recently been furloughed due to a lack of funding of my agency. Because of this, my income has been severely cut and I am unable to pay the entire cost of my rent, along with my other expenses,” one of the sample letters reads. It also suggests the possibility of doing building chores in exchange for reduced payments.
Federal workers will begin to lose money starting with Friday’s paycheque, according to National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon. That cheque will reflect work through last Saturday, the day the shutdown began. That means Saturday shift workers, including many in Customs and Border Protection, won’t see pay for that day in their cheques.
All workers in the nine departments and dozens of agencies with funding lapses will miss their Jan. 11 paycheques if the shutdown continues, he said in an interview.
“I’ve had members come to me saying they are returning holiday and Christmas presents they bought because they are worried about paying rent,” Reardon said. He said he was disappointed that Congress wasn’t in session working to reopen the government.
During the shutdown, Reardon said, “parks are being left open to illegal activity and vandalism, industrial complaints are going unanswered, the SEC isn’t investigating securities fraud and the IRS will have trouble implementing the largest legislative overhaul of the tax code in a generation.”
In addition, thousands of U.S. home sales are being held up because the shutdown has halted the issuance of new flood insurance policies. The Federal Emergency Management Administration stopped issuing new policies under the National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA, which oversees disaster response, is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump’s tweet on Thursday prompted criticism from some Democrats who argued that federal workers are not the partisans the president has made them out to be.
“This is outrageous,” Sen. Mark Warner said in a tweet. “Federal employees don’t go to work wearing red or blue jerseys. They’re public servants. And the President is treating them like poker chips at one of his failed casinos.”
Jim Mcgovern, the incoming Democratic chairman of the House Rules Committee, said if there isn’t a resolution by Jan. 3 when the new Congress is sworn in, the Democratic majority will vote on a stopgap spending measure to reopen the government agencies.
“I don’t see a scenario where the government opens back up before a new Congress is sworn in,” Rep. Ryan Costello, a retiring Pennsylvania Republican, said on MSNBC on Thursday.
Volatility returned to U.S. markets, with stocks bouncing back from the lows of the day after flirting with a bear market amid higher interest rates and the political turmoil in Washington. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average turned green in a late jump after trading negative for most of the day.