With mere hours to go until a potential government shutdown, and leaders of both parties seemingly in little mood to negotiate, President Donald Trump has suggested such an event may be inevitable as Democrats “want illegal immigration and weak borders”.
The Senate has until midnight on Friday to pass a short-term spending bill, which has already been approved by the House of Representatives, to avert a shutdown.
A day – and possibly a weekend – of drama is expected in the closely divided upper chamber, where Democrats have already indicated they have enough support to block the spending legislation.
“Government Funding Bill past last night in the House of Representatives,” Mr Trump tweeted on Friday morning. “Now Democrats are needed if it is to pass in the Senate – but they want illegal immigration and weak borders. Shutdown coming? We need more Republican victories in 2018!”
In a later tweet, Mr Trump quoted Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein telling CNN on Thursday that “shutting down the government is a very serious thing. People die, accidents happen.”
“You don’t know. Necessary functions can cease,” Ms Feinstein said in the interview. “There is no specific list you can look at and make a judgment: ‘Well everything is going to be just fine.’ You can’t make that judgment. So, I think it’s a last resort. And I’m really hopeful we don’t get to it.”
Rather than heading to Florida on Friday evening as originally planned, Mr Trump will reportedly be staying in Washington until after the Senate’s vote on the spending bill.
It is uncertain whether Mr Trump, who has billed himself as the ultimate dealmaker, will be able to craft the ultimate deal to save his presidency from making history. Never before has the government experienced a furlough of federal employees when a single party controls both the White House and Congress, according to the Washington Post.
The conflict is coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Mr Trump’s presidency and could have lasting repercussions, particularly regarding this year’s midterm elections in November.
White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Friday morning that the chances of a shutdown are between 50 and 60 per cent right now.
“We’ve had our meeting just about a half an hour ago, a teleconference with a bunch of agencies to tell them to start to implement their lapse plan, the next step in preparing for a lapse in funding, that’s what we call a shutdown, the formal name of it,” he said. “I guess the bottom line is we’re working to make sure there is no shutdown but if the Senate or the House can’t get together to finalize a deal we’ll be ready.”
Mr Mulvaney noted that the House won’t be in session until next week, “so if the Senate passes anything else than what the House has passed you could wind up in a short-term lapse in funding.”
Nine Senate Democrats who voted for another similar spending measure in December have said they won’t support the latest proposed bill to fund the government for another four weeks. Their decision puts them in the same boat as 30 other Democrats and at least two Senate Republicans who have also said they won’t vote for the measure.
In an attempt to deter Democrats from voting against it, Republican leaders had added a provision to the spending bill that would extend the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years.
Democrats had fought to continue federal funding for the programme that serves nearly 9 million children. Federal financing for it expired in October and several states are close to exhausting their money.
Several have also made it clear they will not consider voting for another spending measure unless they receive assurances that there will be a permanent legislative fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, or DACA. The programme, which expires in March, allows young immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents to secure work permits and deportation reprieves.
Negotiations on any immigration deal have been complicated by Mr Trump’s commitment to build a wall along the US’s southern border – a barrier that Democrats vehemently oppose and would cost billions of dollars to construct. The President maintains that the US needs the wall for safety and security reasons.
Democrats also want concessions from Republicans on Puerto Rico aid and an increase in domestic spending, among other items, according to the New York Times.
Congress has already passed multiple short-term spending bills, known on Capitol Hill as “continuing resolutions” – or CRs – to try to keep negotiations on immigration and other tough issues alive.
But Democratic appetite for passing these CRs appears to have waned, with party members saying more focus should instead be placed on hammering out a longer-term budget deal.
“It’s a mess,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “We can’t keep careening from short-term CR to short-term CR. If this bill passes, there will be no incentive to negotiate and we will be right back here in a month with the same problems at our feet.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his colleagues “on the other side of the aisle do not oppose a single thing in this bill.”
He continued: “They know they can’t possibly explain to our warfighters and veterans, to our seniors, to our opioid treatment centers, to the millions of vulnerable children and their families who depend on S-CHIP for coverage, or to all the Americans who rely on the federal government for critical services like food inspections and Social Security checks.”
