US President Donald Trump and US Democrats have been trading blame for a partial US government shutdown, but doing little substantive talking with each other as the disruption in federal services and public employees’ pay slogs into another weekend.
Trump upped the brinkmanship by threatening anew to close the border with Mexico to press US Congress to cave to his demand for money to pay for a wall.
Democrats vowed to pass legislation restoring the government as soon as they take control of the US House of Representatives on Thursday next week, but that would not accomplish anything unless Trump and the Republican-controlled US Senate go along with it.
Photo: AP
The effects to the public of the impasse grew as the US Environmental Protection Agency, which had the money to function a week longer than some agencies, implemented its shutdown plan at midnight on Friday.
Many of the agency’s 14,000 employees were being furloughed, while disaster-response teams and certain other employees deemed essential would stay on the job, spokeswoman Molly Block said.
Also running short on money: the Smithsonian Institution, which said that its museums and galleries, popular with visitors and locals in the capital, would close starting midweek if the partial shutdown drags on.
However, federal flood insurance policies would continue to be issued and renewed, in a reversal prompted by pressure from lawmakers, Republican US Senator Marco Rubio said.
Trump appeared no closer to securing money for his signature border wall, which he vowed during his election campaign that he would make Mexico pay for. He has failed to do so.
Now Democratic leaders are adamant that they will not authorize money for the project, calling it wasteful and ineffective.
They have showed no signs of bending, either.
“We are far apart,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CBS on Friday.
“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Trump said on Twitter.
He also threatened to cut off US aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, some of the countries he deems have not done enough to combat illegal immigration.
He has made similar threats in the past without following through, and it is Congress, not the president, that appropriates aid money.
The shutdown has forced hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors to stay home or work without pay.
Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said that Democrats are no longer negotiating with the administration over an earlier offer by the White House to accept less than the US$5 billion Trump wants for the wall.
Democrats said the White House offered to accept US$2.5 billion for border security, but that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told US Vice President Mike Pence that it was not acceptable.
It was also not guaranteed that Trump would settle for that amount.
“There’s not a single Democrat talking to the president of the United States about this deal,” Mulvaney said on Friday.
Speaking on Fox News and later to reporters, he tried to drive a wedge between Democrats, pinning the blame on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Mulvaney said that Schumer was “really interested in doing a deal and coming to some sort of compromise,” but he understood that Pelosi was at risk of losing the speakership of the House if she went along.
“So we’re in this for the long haul,” he said.
Pelosi has all but locked up the support she needs to win the speaker’s gavel on Thursday and there has been no sign that she and Schumer are in conflict.
“For the White House to try and blame anyone but the president for this shutdown doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman said.
Pelosi has vowed to pass legislation to reopen the nine shuttered departments and dozens of agencies now hit by the partial shutdown as soon as she takes the gavel, which is expected when the new Congress convenes.
However, that alone would not solve the shutdown, absent Senate approval and Trump’s signature.
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said that Democrats united against the wall and would not seriously consider any White House offer unless Trump backs it publicly, because he “has changed his position so many times.”
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reacted cautiously to Trump’s threat to close the border, calling it an “internal affair of the US government.”
“We are always seeking a good relationship with the United States. We do not want to be rash,” he said.
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