Dear Commons Community,
Much of the federal government officially shut down early this morning after Senate Democrats blocked consideration of a four-week spending measure to keep the government operating. Exactly what this means for the various government services is not clear. More than one million active-duty military personnel will serve with no lapse, but will not be paid until the shutdown ends. Most mandatory programs — entitlements such as Social Security that are automatically funded rather than subject to congressional appropriations — can continue without disruption. The photo above on the Huffington Post website shows Donald Trump’s head in silhouette and implies that he owns the shutdown. Here is a further description of the events last night courtesy of the New York Times:
“The shutdown, coming one year to the day after President Trump took office, set off a new round of partisan recriminations and posed risks for both parties. It came after a fruitless last-minute negotiating session at the White House between Mr. Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.
With just 50 senators voting in favor, Senate Republican leaders fell well short of the 60 votes necessary to proceed on the spending measure, which had passed the House on Thursday. Five conservative state Democrats voted for the spending measure. Five Republicans voted against it, although one of those, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, did so for procedural reasons.
As the clock ticked toward midnight, when funding for the government was set to expire, senators huddled on the floor of the crowded Senate chamber, searching for some way forward.
Then, in the early morning hours, Mr. McConnell proposed a measure that would keep the government open for another three weeks, not four as the House measure would have done, and said the Senate would come back to into session at noon Saturday.
“Senate Democrats own the Schumer Shutdown,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “Tonight, they put politics above our national security, military families, and our country’s ability to serve all Americans.”
Democrats, calling it the “Trump shutdown,” countered that Republicans were responsible for the management of a government in their control.
“Every American knows the Republican Party controls the White House, the Senate, the House,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s their job to keep the government open.”
In addition to funding government operations through Feb. 16, the House-passed bill would extend funding by six years for the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, a provision intended to secure Democratic votes.
But Democrats were seeking concessions on other priorities, such as protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation, increasing domestic spending, securing disaster aid for Puerto Rico and bolstering the government’s response to the opioid epidemic.
Federal agencies had prepared for the shutdown; on Thursday night, officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agency leaders to give their employees informal notice of who would be furloughed and who would not if funding lapsed.
Formal notifications are to be given as early as Saturday morning, budget office officials said, insisting on anonymity to brief reporters about the details of what the White House called “lapse planning and shutdown operations.”
The failure of the federal government to reach an agreement on averting the shutdown falls on the shoulders of both Republicans and Democrats, however, President Trump owns a disproportionate amount of the blame based on how he has [or has not] handled negotiations the past two weeks.
Tony
