Record government shutdown: For 800,000, pay is $0.00
WASHINGTON — U.S. federal workers got pay statements offering nothing but zeros Friday, the most tangible and painful sign yet of a three-week partial government shutdown that has paralyzed Washington and is sure to become the longest closure in U.S. history. U.S. President Donald Trump and nervous Republicans scrambled to find a way out of the mess.
The House and Senate voted to give federal workers backpay whenever the federal government reopens and then left town for the weekend, leaving the shutdown on track to become one for the record books once the clock struck midnight Friday and entered its 22nd day. While Trump considered one dramatic escape route — declaring a national emergency to build the wall without a new stream of cash from Congress — members of his own party were fiercely debating that idea, and the president urged Congress to come up with another solution.
“What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency,” Trump said. He insisted that he had the authority to do that, adding: “I’m not going to do it so fast because this is something Congress can do.”
About 800,000 workers missed paycheques on Friday, many receiving blank pay statements. Some posted photos of their empty earnings statements on social media as a rallying cry to end the shutdown, a jarring image that many in the White House feared could turn more voters against the president as he holds out for billions in new wall funding.
With polls showing Trump getting most of the blame for the shutdown, the administration accelerated planning for a possible emergency declaration to try to get around Congress and fund the wall from existing sources of federal revenue. The White House explored diverting money for wall construction from a range of other accounts. One idea being considered was diverting some of the $13.9 billion US allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers after last year’s deadly hurricanes and floods.
That option triggered an uproar in Puerto Rico, which is still slowly rebuilding, and appeared to lose steam on Friday.
Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas told reporters after discussions with the White House: “I feel confident disaster relief dollars will not be tapped.”
Brady said the administration was looking at the “breadth” of unspent dollars in other government accounts.
Other possibilities included tapping asset forfeiture funds, including money seized by the Department of Justice from drug kingpins, according to a congressional Republican not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The White House also was eyeing military-construction funds, another politically difficult choice because the money would be diverted from a backlog of hundreds of projects at bases around the U.S.
Despite Trump’s go-slow message, momentum grew in some corners for some sort of emergency declaration. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who met with the president on Friday, took to Twitter afterward to urge: “Mr. President, Declare a national emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW.”
Trump has been counselled by outside advisers to move toward a national-emergency declaration, but many in the White House are trying to pump the brakes.
Senior aide Jared Kushner, who travelled with the president to the Texas border on Thursday, was among those opposed to the declaration, arguing to the president that pursuing a broader immigration deal was a better option.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has signalled moral opposition to the wall and vowed to oppose any funding, said the president is seeking to divert attention from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and other White House problems.
“This isn’t a wall between Mexico and the United States. This is a wall between his failures of his administration,” Pelosi told reporters. “This is a big diversion, and he’s a master of diversion.”
Although Trump has been frustrated with aides as he loses the public-relations battle over the shutdown, White House attempts to use the trappings of the presidency to buttress his case for the wall have yielded mixed results in the president’s view.
Trump has long avoided using the Oval Office as a backdrop for his speeches, telling aides that previous presidents looked stilted and “flat” in the standard, straight-ahead camera angle. But he was persuaded that the seriousness of the moment warranted the Oval Office for his speech to the nation this week about the fight over the border wall.
But since Tuesday night’s address, Trump has complained that he looked lifeless and boring, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The president also expressed misgivings about his visit to the border, believing it would do little to change anyone’s mind.
In a Friday morning tweet, Trump called illegal immigration on the southern border “an invasion,” even though border crossings have declined in recent years. Later, he tried to blame Democrats for the shutdown, claiming he’s flexible about the needed barrier.
“I don’t care what they name it,” Trump said. “They can name it ‘peaches.’ ”
Trump has told advisers he believes the fight for the wall — even if it never yields the requested funding — is a political win for him.
But some of his outside advisers have urged him to declare a national emergency, believing it would have two benefits: First, it would allow him to claim that he was the one to act to reopen the government. Second, inevitable legal challenges would send the matter to court, allowing Trump to continue the fight for the wall — and continue to excite his supporters — while not actually closing the government or immediately requiring him to start construction.