Republicans and Democrats lock horns over immigration
President Donald Trump and Republican legislators were locked in a standoff with Democrats over the US government shutdown at the weekend, with Republicans saying that they would not negotiate about immigration until the government is reopened.
Funding for federal agencies ran out at midnight on Friday in the first shutdown of the federal government since a 16day funding lapse in October 2013. It meant that the second year of Trump’s presidency began without a fully functioning government.
Democrats stuck to their demands that any short-term spending legislation must include protection for young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.
Republicans in turn said they would not negotiate on immigration until Democrats gave them the votes needed to reopen the government.
Government workers were told to stay home or, in some cases, to work without pay until new funding was approved.
The Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives held rare weekend sessions on Saturday, facing a political crisis that could affect November’s congressional elections. Both chambers resigned themselves to failure and agreed to resume work on Sunday.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said that the Senate would vote at 8am (South African time) on Monday on a bill to fund the government to February 8, unless Democrats agreed to hold it sooner.
Parks, open-air monuments and Smithsonian museums outside the US Capitol were open as a second annual women’s rights march took place on the National Mall. But visitors were turned away from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York harbour.
A scheduled trip by Trump and some cabinet members to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was being assessed on a day-to-day basis, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said.
Republicans said they would refuse to negotiate on immigration until Democrats provided the votes to reopen the government. Democrats insisted that they had been willing to compromise but Republicans had backed out of deals.
“The president will not negotiate on immigration reform until Democrats stop playing games and reopen the government,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.
Marc Short, the White House’s legislative affairs director, said Trump had been in contact with Republican leaders in Congress during the day but had not reached out to Democrats.
Short said the president would probably be most effective making the case for ending the shutdown directly to the American people and he did not rule out Trump addressing the nation in the coming days.
The tough message from the White House and Republicans in Congress led to speculation that Washington could be in for a prolonged political battle.
At the Capitol, the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, delivered a stinging portrayal of Trump as an unreliable negotiating partner, saying the two sides came close to an agreement several times only to have Trump back out at the urging of anti-immigration conservatives. “Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O,” said Schumer, who met Trump at the White House on Friday for a 90minute meeting that had briefly raised hopes of a breakthrough. “It’s impossible to negotiate with a constantly moving target.”
The federal government had been running on three consecutive temporary funding bills since the new fiscal year began in October. Democrats had sought to secure permanent legal protections for 700,000 young undocumented immigrants as a condition for new government funding after their attempts to push through the protections in stand-alone bills were rebuffed.
Trump ordered the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival programme to expire in March, requiring Congress to act.
US Representative Gerry Connolly, a Democrat, said there was no sign that serious bipartisan negotiations were taking place and he would be surprised if Congress reached a resolution before Monday.
“You can hear the crickets chirping in the hallway,” Connolly said on Saturday night. He said that if there were negotiations, “it would have to be really deep back channels”.