The House-passed bill would fund government operations through Feb. 16, and 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.
House Republican leaders told their members Friday night that no “imminent votes” were expected, indicating that after midnight, parts of the government would be closed. Federal agencies were already preparing for that eventuality; 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.”
More than one million active-duty military personnel will serve with no lapse, they said, but could not be paid until the shutdown ends. Agencies like the Energy Department that have funding that is not subject to annual appropriations can use that money to stay open, the officials said, and the administration is encouraging them to do so. Most mandatory programs — entitlements such as Social Security that are automatically funded rather than subject to congressional appropriations — can continue without disruption.
Officials said Mr. Trump may travel on Air Force One to carry out his constitutional responsibilities, including a planned trip next week to Davos, Switzerland — although it was unclear whether trips to Mar-a-Lago, his exclusive club in Palm Beach, Fla., for golf and socializing, such as the one he had planned for this weekend, would fall into that category.
The president tried to jump-start negotiations by inviting Mr. Schumer to meet with him in the Oval Office.
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“We had a long and detailed meeting,” Mr. Schumer said at the Capitol after leaving the White House. “We discussed all of the major outstanding issues. We made some progress, but we still have a good number of disagreements. The discussions will continue.”
By Friday night, a last-minute congressional deal to stop a rare shutdown of a federal government under one-party control remained elusive.
“Our Democratic colleagues are engaged in a dangerous game of chicken,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned in a speech on the Senate floor.
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Mr. Trump, who described his session with Mr. Schumer as an “excellent preliminary meeting” in a Twitter post Friday afternoon, did not appear able or willing to suggest his own solution.
Mr. Cornyn said Mr. Trump rejected a proposal by Mr. Schumer to fund the government through Tuesday to allow negotiations to continue.
“The president told him to go back and talk to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and work it out,” Mr. Cornyn said, referring to the House speaker and Senate majority leader. A spokesman for Mr. Schumer, Matt House, said that was not true.
Senate Democrats still held out hope that Mr. Trump, scorched by the firestorm prompted by his vulgar, racially tinged comments on Africa last week, would be willing to make concessions.
“It’s time for us as Democrats and Republicans to sit down in a room together, think about this great nation and the frustration they have with our political system and those of us in political life,’’ Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said in a speech on the Senate floor.
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Around the country, state and local officials were left scratching their heads at the dysfunction in Washington.
“We’re the United States of America,” Gov. Matt Mead, the two-term Republican governor of Wyoming, said in an interview Friday. “We should be able to figure out these problems without going to the cliff every so often whether it’s with Republicans or Democrats in office. There certainly has to be a better way.”
Democrats delivered speeches on the Senate floor in front of a huge placard that blared, “Trump Shutdown.” At the White House, Mr. Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said the Trump administration was preparing for “what we’re calling the ‘Schumer shutdown.’”
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Tempers were flaring in the Republican Party as well. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a moderate on immigration who has been trying to broker a deal with Democrats, laced into Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Friday, deriding him as “the Steve King of the Senate” in an interview with MSNBC, a reference to the Iowa congressman who is perhaps the most virulent anti-immigrant voice in Congress.
Mr. Cotton, who has helped thwart Mr. Graham’s efforts, retorted by referring to Mr. Graham’s failed 2016 presidential bid.
“The difference between Steve King and Lindsey Graham is that Steve King can actually win an election in Iowa,” Mr. Cotton told reporters.
Mr. Cotton went on to argue that it was Mr. Trump’s views on immigration that powered him to the Republican Party’s nomination, while Mr. Graham was relegated to the “kiddie table” at the primary debates.
Mr. Trump canceled plans to travel to his Florida resort on Friday and will stay in Washington until a spending bill is passed, a White House official said Friday morning.
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If Democrats vote down the stopgap bill, the move would hold undeniable risks. Ten Senate Democrats are running for re-election in states that Mr. Trump won in 2016, and many of those states — such as Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia — may hold little sympathy for one of the primary causes of the looming shutdown: protecting the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.
Five of those Democrats introduced legislation on Friday to withhold the pay of members of Congress during a shutdown. “If members of Congress can’t figure this out and keep the government open, then none of us should get paid,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.
Three of them, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, announced they would vote for the Republican spending measure.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, warned that the Senate was “just hours away from an entirely avoidable government shutdown.”
“This vote should be a no-brainer,” Mr. McConnell said, “and it would be, except the Democratic leader has convinced his members to filibuster any funding bill that doesn’t include legislation they are demanding for people who came into the United States illegally.”
The stopgap bill, which passed the House by a vote of 230 to 197, would keep the government open for a month, provide funding for CHIP and delay or suspend a handful of taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act.
About a dozen, or possibly more, Senate Democratic votes will be needed to approve the measure because some Republican senators are expected to vote no.
The standoff on immigration dates back to September, when Mr. Trump moved to end an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which shields the young immigrants from deportation. Democrats have been eager to enshrine into law protections for those immigrants.
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At the same time, congressional leaders from both parties have been trying to reach an agreement to raise strict limits on domestic and military spending, a deal that would pave the way for a long-term spending package. So far this fiscal year, they have relied on stopgap measures to keep the government funded.
By Friday evening, it was still far from clear how the political blame would be divvied up if the government does shut down on Saturday, the anniversary of Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
“At some point, Congress needs to do better than government-by-crisis, short-term fixes, and sidestepping difficult issues,’’ said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware. “That time is now.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers raced against the clock to avert a federal government shutdown on Friday but it was not clear if hectic negotiations would bring a deal before a midnight deadline.
The vast majority of Democratic senators have said they would not support the bill unless it includes protections for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants. Republicans have so far refused.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled a key procedural vote on the bill for 10 p.m. (0300 GMT) and Democratic and Republican lawmakers huddled to see if either side was ready to back down or if they could find a compromise.
Even as they talked, both sides were blaming each other for the impasse. Without a late deal, the shutdown would begin right after midnight, on the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Trump met with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer at the White House earlier on Friday in search of a breakthrough.
“Making progress - four week extension would be best,” Trump said in a tweet.
Schumer agreed that some progress had been made but said there were still a number of disagreements.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a stopgap spending bill late on Thursday that would fund the federal government through Feb. 16. But it needs the support of at least 10 Democrats to pass the Senate.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said he expected an agreement would be reached in the next 24 hours, indicating the government would shut down at midnight but reopen again at some point over the weekend.
Past government shutdowns have done little lasting damage to the U.S. economy, but put hundreds of thousands of “non-essential” federal workers on temporary unpaid leave. Shutdowns can also rattle financial markets.
“Essential” employees who deal with public safety and national security would keep working under a shutdown. That includes more than 1.3 million people on active duty in the military who would be required to keep working and would not be paid until the shutdown ends.
The White House said on Friday night that it would keep national parks open, with rangers and security guards on duty as usual – something the administration of President Barack Obama ruled out during the last significant shutdown in 2013.
During that impasse, government funding lapsed for 16 full days and about 800,000 federal workers were put on temporary leave.
This week’s showdown follows a months-long struggle in Congress to agree on government funding levels and the immigration issue.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney talks with reporters at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
The federal government is operating on a third temporary funding measure since the current fiscal year began in October.
PROTECTION FOR “DREAMERS”
Democrats have demanded the bill include protections from deportation for about 700,000 illegal immigrants who were brought into the United States as children.
Known as “Dreamers” and largely from Mexico and Central America, these immigrants were given temporary legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program started by Obama. In September, Trump announced he was ending the program and giving Congress until March 5 to come up with a legislative replacement.
Trump pointed the finger at his political rivals earlier on Friday.
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“Democrats are needed if it is to pass in the Senate - but they want illegal immigration and weak borders. Shutdown coming?” he said.
Democrats say the search for a deal has been hurt by Trump’s sending contradictory messages about what kind of bipartisan immigration proposal he would accept.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton said he was willing to provide protection to DACA recipients in future negotiations.
“We have another six weeks to solve that problem. It doesn’t really involve government funding,” Cotton told Fox News. “We should take those two issues up in sequence.”
Republicans have a 51-49 majority in the Senate. With Senator John McCain undergoing cancer treatment at home in Arizona, Republicans need at least 10 Democrats to reach the 60 votes required to pass a spending bill.
There were some dissident voices inside both parties.
At least three Republican senators have said they will not back the resolution in its current form. On the other side, at least three Democrats who are up for re-election this year in states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election said they would support the bill.
Some senators raised the possibility of merely approving enough new federal funds for a few days, as a tactic to put pressure on negotiators to then cut deals on immigration, defense spending and non-defense funding by next week.
But a White House aide said late on Friday that Trump would not support a deal that keeps the government open for just four or five days.
McConnell also shot down the idea. “Let’s fund the government for a full month so we can actually get something done,” he said.
US Congress Government shutdown: first closure in four years looms hours before deadline As the minutes ticked towards midnight, dueling parties in Congress showed no signs of breaking impasse over spending and Daca Donald Trump arrives to speak live via video link to the annual March for Life. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
The US government on Friday barreled toward its first shutdown in more than four years, as lawmakers in Congress showed no signs of breaking an impasse over spending priorities and the fate of young undocumented immigrants.
Trump to mark anniversary with Mar-a-Lago bash as thousands get set to protest Read more
Hours before a deadline of midnight to fund the government, the White House said the prospect of a shutdown had “ratcheted up” and blamed Democrats for objecting to the short-term spending measure that narrowly passed the House of Representatives on Thursday.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Friday evening he expected an agreement to be reached within the next 24 hours. “I think there is a deal in the next 24 hours because of the nature of the back and forth between the House and the Senate I look at more in terms of what gets done before the offices are supposed to open on Monday,” Mulvaney told CNN.
By Friday afternoon, it was clear Democrats and a handful of Republicans were steadfast in their opposition. Donald Trump canceled plans to travel to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and summoned the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, to the White House.
Despite huddling behind closed doors for an hour and 15 minutes, the two New Yorkers fell short of reaching a deal.
“We made some progress but we still have a good number of disagreements,” Schumer told reporters upon returning to Capitol Hill. “The discussion will continue.”
On Twitter, Trump offered a rosier assessment, declaring: “Excellent preliminary meeting in Oval with @SenSchumer - working on solutions for Security and our great Military together with @SenateMajLdr McConnell and @SpeakerRyan. Making progress - four week extension would be best!”
Quick guide All you need to know about the US government shutdown Show Hide What is a government shutdown? When the US Congress fails to pass appropriate funding for government operations and agencies, a shutdown is triggered. Most government services are frozen, barring those that are deemed “essential”, such as the work of the Department of Homeland Security and FBI. During a shutdown, nearly 40% of the government workforce is placed on unpaid furlough and told not to work. Many, but not all, are non-defense federal employees. Active duty military personnel are not furloughed. Why is the government poised to shut down? Members of Congress are at an impasse over what should be included in a spending bill to keep the government open. Democrats have insisted any compromise must also include protections for the nearly 700,000 young, undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the US as children.
The Dreamers, who were granted temporary legal status under Barack Obama, were newly exposed to the threat of deportation when Donald Trump moved to rescind their protections in September. Trump and Republicans have argued immigration is a separate issue and can be dealt with at a later time.
How common is a shutdown? There have been 12 government shutdowns in the US since 1981, although ranging in duration. The longest occurred under Bill Clinton, lasting a total of 21 days from December 1995 to January 1996, when the then House speaker, Newt Gingrich, demanded sharp cuts to government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and welfare.
The most recent shutdown transpired under Obama in 2013, pitting the president against the Republican-led House of Representatives. Republicans refused to support a spending bill that included funding for Obama’s healthcare law, resulting in a 16-day shutdown that at its peak affected 850,000 federal employees. What would be the cost of a shutdown? A government shutdown would cost the US roughly $6.5bn a week, according to a report by S&P Global analysts. “A disruption in government spending means no government paychecks to spend; lost business and revenue to private contractors; lost sales at retail shops, particularly those that circle now-closed national parks; and less tax revenue for Uncle Sam,” the report stated. “That means less economic activity and fewer jobs.” Nearly 1 million people would not receive regular paychecks in the event of a shutdown. In previous shutdowns, furloughed employees have been paid retrospectively – but those payments have often been delayed. Sabrina Siddiqui Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America
John Cornyn, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said he had spoken to White House chief of staff John Kelly and heard that “the president told [Schumer] to go back to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and work it out”.
“The ball is in Senator Schumer’s court,” he said.
The meeting came hours after the White House laid blame squarely on the Democratic leader for bringing the federal government to the brink, even coining the term “Schumer shutdown”.
“We do not want a shutdown,” Mulvaney told reporters. “If Mr Schumer insists on it, he is in a position to force this on the American people.”
But a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Friday found that 48% of Americans would blame Trump and the Republicans in the event of a government shutdown; 28% said the Democrats would be responsible and 18% said both parties would be equally at fault.
In a floor speech in the Senate, Mitch McConnell said a vote on the stopgap spending measure should be a “no brainer”. Democrats were willing to “hold the entire nation hostage” to protect “people who came into the United States illegally”, he said.
“To even repeat this position out loud is to see how completely ridiculous it is.”
This is the greatest country in the world, but we do have some really stupid people representing it from time to time Republican Orrin Hatch
Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, was more blunt.
“This is the greatest country in the world, but we do have some really stupid people representing it from time to time,” he said.
Trump was preparing to mark his first year in office on Saturday, potentially as the first president to oversee a shutdown with a single party in control of the government.
In an early morning tweet, he wrote: “Shutdown coming? We need more Republican victories in 2018!”
House Republican leaders, who found enough conservative votes to pass an extension of government funding through 16 February, said they would send their members home, escalating pressure on the Senate to pass something similar. In a subsequent advisory, House Republicans were told to “remain flexible”.
Schumer has proposed a shorter stopgap measure, which would expire after four or five days, as a way of averting a shutdown without compromising Democrats’ attempts to negotiate an immigration deal.
Republicans balked at that timeline, noting that the shorter-term proposal would not resolve the issues over immigration or domestic spending.
Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, called the proposal “unproductive”. Mark Meadows, leader of the powerful conservative House Freedom Caucus, rejected it outright.
Senate Democrats cited a number of shortcomings in the House funding bill, ranging from immigration to emergency disaster relief. A handful of conservatives in the Senate also objected, leaving Republicans short of the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster.
A shutdown would place nearly 40% of federal employees on unpaid furlough and cost the US an estimated $6.5bn a week.
US government shutdown looms as Republicans struggle to pitch bill Read more
The primary sticking point for Democrats remained a failure to offer protections for the nearly 700,000 undocumented migrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the US as children. In September, Trump rescinded an Obama-era program that granted temporary legal status, exposing the young migrants to deportation.
The already-fraught negotiations were severely damaged last week when Trump reportedly questioned the need to admit immigrants from “shithole countries”, in reference to Haiti, El Salvador and Africa.
Trump then undermined efforts by Republicans to garner support for their bill, denouncing the measure for including a six-year reauthorization of a popular children’s health insurance program.
The White House strongly rejected the notion that the president had been disengaged and bore some of the blame for the breakdown in bipartisan talks.
“There is no way you could lay this at the feet of the president of the United States,” Mulvaney said. “He is actively working to get a deal.”
Amid the chaos on Friday morning, the Democratic congressman Al Green once again forced the House to vote on Trump’s impeachment. Though the resolution was again postponed on a strong bipartisan vote, it drew more support from Democrats than previously.
Additional reporting by Ben Jacobs
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