Democrats, GOP dodge blame for US gov’t shutdown
Visitors to the Statue of Liberty stand in line to board a ferry that will cruise the bay around the statue and Ellis Island, Saturday, Jan. 20, 2018, in New York. The National Park Service announced that the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island would be closed Saturday “due to a lapse in appropriations.” Late Friday, the Senate failed to approve legislation to keep the government from shutting down after the midnight deadline. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
WASHINGTON — Hours after shuttering much of the federal government, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress spent Saturday dodging blame for a paralyzing standoff over immigration and showed few signs of progress on negotiations needed to end it.
The finger-pointing played out in rare weekend proceedings in both the House and Senate, where lawmakers were eager to show voters they were actively working for a solution—or at least actively making their case why the other party was at fault.
The scene highlighted the high political stakes for both parties in an election-year shutdown whose consequences were far from clear.
“The American people cannot begin to understand why the Senate Democratic leader thinks the entire government should be shut down until he gets his way on illegal immigration,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, hours after a last-chance Senate vote failed.
Deal with Trump
Democrats refused to provide the votes needed to reopen the government until they strike a deal with US President Donald Trump protecting young immigrants from deportation, providing disaster relief and boosting spending for opioid treatment and other domestic programs.
Democrats feel “very, very strongly about the issues,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, adding that he believes “the American people are on our side.”
The fighting followed a late-night vote in which Senate Democrats blocked a House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks.
Symbols of American promise became emblems of American dysfunction on Saturday. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island turned away visitors in New York, due to what the National Park Service described as “lapse in appropriations,” a bureaucratic term for lack of money.
In Philadelphia, crowds of tourists were told Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed, and the Liberty Bell were closed.
The shuttered icons were some of the easiest-to-spot impacts of the partial government closure. Funds ran out at midnight on Friday, leaving 48 hours before the most dramatic effect — the furloughing of nearly a million federal employees — went into effect.
Essential federal services
As in shutdowns past, federal services were carved into two categories — essential and nonessential — with the former set to carry on as normal.
In that category, the mail will be delivered and Social Security checks still go out, the air traffic control system stays up and running, as do the FBI, Customs and Border Protection and veterans hospitals.
Still, there were plenty of inconveniences to irk American taxpayers.
While active-duty troops will stay at their posts during a shutdown, people stationed overseas were touched by the political fallout almost immediately.
The American Forces Network, which broadcasts American radio and television programming in Europe and other locations outside the United States, put a message on its Facebook page that said its services would not be available “due to the government shutdown.”
On Saturday, Republicans began the day hopeful they might pick off Democratic support for a three-week version and bring the episode to a quick end to the shutdown.
Democrats are insisting on an alternative lasting only several days—which they think would pressure Republicans to cut an immigration deal—and say they’ll kill the three-week version when the Senate votes on it by early Monday.
Trump anniversary
The shutdown came on the second anniversary of Trump’s inauguration. As lawmakers bickered in the Capitol, protesters marched outside in a reprise of the Women’s March from a year ago.
The president remained out of sight and canceled plans to travel to his resort in Florida for the weekend. He did tweet, making light of the timing by saying Democrats “wanted to give me a nice present” to mark the start of his second year in office.
Trump worked the phones, staying in touch with McConnell, while White House legislative affairs director Marc Short and budget chief Mick Mulvaney met at the Capitol with House Republicans.
GOP lawmakers voiced support for the White House stance of not negotiating while the government was shuttered.
Tempers were short and theatrics high. Lawmakers bickered over blame, hypocrisy and even the posters brought to the House floor.
While neither chamber voted on a measure to open the government, the House did vote on whether a poster displayed by Republican Rep. Bradley Byrne of Alabama violated the House rules on decorum.
The House voted to allow the poster, which bore a photo of Schumer and the quote “the politics of idiocy.”
While Republicans blamed the breakdown on Schumer, Democrats increasingly focused their messaging on criticizing Trump, whose popularity is dismal.
Democrats were using his zigzagging stance in immigration talks—first encouraging deals, then rejecting them—to underscore his first, chaotic year in office.
Negotiating with Jell-O
“Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O,” Schumer said.
Short compared Democrats’ actions to “a 2-year-old temper tantrum.”
Republicans seemed content to hope additional Democrats will break as pressure builds and the impact of the shutdown becomes clearer.
In the late-night vote blocking the bill preventing a shutdown, five Democrats from states Trump won in the 2016 election voted to keep the government functioning.
In a sign that moderates are feeling pressure, more than a dozen centrist senators from both parties have been trying to craft an immigration and spending compromise that party leaders would embrace, but they’ve fallen short so far.
Republicans argued that Democrats were blocking extra Pentagon funds by keeping government closed and thwarting a long-term budget deal.
“I question if Senate Democrats are really united,” Short told reporters. “We think there’ll be more today and hopefully they’ll continue to see that it’s not wise to hold our troops hostage.”
But pressure on Republicans could mount with the new workweek on Monday and the impact of the federal shutdown becomes more apparent to people.
