US government shutdown looms
Immigration a threat to national security, Trump warns
WASHINGTON: Partisan finger-pointing over immigration policy on Tuesday left the US Congress and the White House stumbling closer to a possible federal government shutdown by the end of the week, although Wall Street held out hopes for a deal to prevent that. Republicans who control Congress are expected to try to push another stopgap funding bill and get it to President Donald Trump’s desk before tomorrow’s midnight deadline. But there are perils. Conservatives want a large increase in defense spending that such a bill would not provide. Many Democrats might withhold their support unless immigration policy is addressed. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that a government funding bill should not be held “hostage” to the immigration debate. And the White House director of legislative affairs, Marc Short, told reporters there was “no artificial timeline” for a deal on so-called Dreamers and that it would be “herculean” to get it done by this week.
The negotiating climate has become increasingly poisonous after a sudden halt last week in talks toward a deal to shield the Dreamers - immigrants brought into the country illegally as children - from deportation. The Republican president rejected a bipartisan agreement reached by a group of senators. Divisions between Republicans and Democrats then deepened amid an uproar over Trump’s reported use of the word “shithole” when speaking about African countries last week. Trump has denied using that word.
Meanwhile, a new fissure among Democrats opened on Tuesday, as the head of the influential Congressional Hispanic Caucus expressed her opposition to the bipartisan Senate deal, although she said she had not seen its text and noted it had some positive aspects. “In its current form I’m probably a no,” Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham said in an interview. She said she will back a narrower bipartisan House of Representatives bill. The Senate approach, Lujan Grisham said, would reduce the parents of Dreamers to “second-class citizens” because they would receive temporary protections and no pathway to citizenship, as well as other problems. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham on Tuesday blamed White House staff for altering Trump’s positive view on the Senate bipartisan agreement on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects the Dreamers. “I will say I don’t think the president was well-served by his staff,” Graham said. House Republicans were scheduled to huddle on Tuesday night to try to figure out how best to avoid a government shutdown, congressional aides said. If a temporary “continuing resolution” to keep the government operating results, it would be the fourth such measure since the 2018 federal fiscal year began on Oct 1, a sign of Washington’s serious struggles to pass spending legislation. These stopgap measures have become routine, with 112 of them passed since 1998, according to the Peter G Peterson Foundation, which advocates fiscal responsibility. Analyst Ed Mills at financial firm Raymond James said another short-term extension is expected. “This is likely to be a week of brinkmanship and the potential of a government shutdown is elevated. Should a shutdown occur, we do not expect much of a market reaction,” Mills noted.
‘Kick the can’
No 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer said Democrats have not decided whether they will support another continuing resolution and “can kick the can down the road one more time.” The slim Republican margin of control in the US Senate means Trump’s party will need some Democratic support to resolve the government funding stand-off. Democrats have said they want a spending bill that protects the Dreamer immigrants, mostly Hispanic young adults.
Talks also continued on related issues, including how to fund a children’s healthcare program and to establish higher spending caps for the US military and other domestic programs. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden was pushing for a six-year reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to be passed this week, possibly as part of a stopgap spending bill, a House Republican aide said.
Trump and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin have traded accusations over the collapse of the immigration talks. Durbin intends to introduce the bipartisan agreement as legislation, spokesman Ben Marter said. But it was not yet clear whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would schedule it for a floor debate and vote. Trump said in September he was terminating the DACA program, launched by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, effective in March. Congress has until then to pass legislation to protect the roughly 700,000 Dreamers from deportation and give them work permits.
President Trump said Tuesday that America’s current immigration system weakens national security, as his administration sought Supreme Court backing to lift protections shielding 700,000 “Dreamer” immigrants from deportation. Days after Trump sparked an international uproar by reportedly complaining about immigration from “shithole” countries, his administration sought to refocus the debate by tying a series of current immigration programs to terror threats.
A new report from the Justice and Homeland Security Departments said that nearly three-fourths of the 549 international terror-related convictions in US courts since the September 11 attacks in 2001 involved foreign-born individuals, including 148 granted citizenship after arriving in the United States. It also said it had blocked many hundreds more potential terrorists who tried to enter the country both legally and illegally. Trump tweeted out a link to the report Tuesday evening, in support of White House efforts to end programs like the green card lottery and family-based migration. —Agencies
Negotiating climate become increasingly poisonous