Feuding Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress are trying to dodge blame for a paralyzing standoff over immigration, and showing few signs of progress on negotiations needed to end a US government shutdown.
The finger-pointing on Saturday played out in rare weekend proceedings in both the US House of Representatives 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 political stakes for both parties in an election-year shutdown whose consequences are far from clear.
Photo: AFP
“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,” Republican US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said hours after a last-chance Senate vote failed.
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,” Democratic US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, 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 government agencies functioning for four weeks.
Republicans began the day hopeful they might pick off Democratic support for a three-week version and bring the episode to a quick end.
Democrats are insisting on an alternative lasting only several days — which they think would pressure Republicans to cut an immigration deal — and have said they would kill the three-week version when the Senate votes on it today.
Trump 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 telephones, staying in touch with McConnell, while White House legislative affairs director Marc Short and budget chief Mick Mulvaney met at the US Capitol with House Republicans.
Republican lawmakers voiced support for the White House’s stance of not negotiating while the US 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 US government, the House did vote on whether a poster displayed by Republican US Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama violated the House rules on decorum.
The House voted to allow the poster, which bore a photograph 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 used his zigzagging stance in immigration talks — first encouraging deals, then rejecting them — to underscore his first, chaotic year in office.
“Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O,” Schumer said.
Short compared Democrats’ actions to “a two-year-old temper tantrum.”
Republicans seemed content to hope that additional Democrats will break as pressure builds and the effects of the shutdown becomes clearer.
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 have fallen short so far.
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