Shutdown to drag into next week — and next year

The partial government shutdown will drag into next week after the Senate adjourned until Monday and House GOP leaders said they did not expect a vote this week to reopen the government.

On day six of the shutdown, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) advised members “that no votes are expected in the House this week.”

“As the House awaits Senate action on remaining FY19 appropriations, we will aim to provide 24 hours’ notice ahead of any expected votes in the House,” Scalise’s office added in a notice.

{mosads}At 4 p.m., the Senate convened, only to announce that there would be no action in that chamber either. It adjourned until Monday, when there will be a pro forma session on the last day of 2018. It is then scheduled to meet on Jan. 2.

About 25 percent of the federal government shut down on Saturday after Congress and President Trump were unable to reach a deal on funding over demands from the White House for $5 billion in funding for a wall on the Mexican border. 

Little progress has been made in negotiations since as Democratic lawmakers and the White House remain at odds over funding for Trump’s proposed border wall.

Both sides on Thursday sought to pin blame on the other over the stalemate.

“The President has made clear that any bill to fund the government must adequately fund border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs, criminals, MS-13 gang members, child smugglers and human traffickers into our communities – and protect the American people,” the White House said in a statement released after the Senate action.

“The Administration understands this crisis and made a reasonable, common-sense solution to Democrats five days ago — we’ve not received a single response,” the statement said. “The President and his team stayed in Washington over Christmas hoping to negotiate a deal that would stop the dangerous crisis on the border, protect American communities, and re-open the government. The Democrats decided to go home. The only rational conclusion is that the Democrat party is openly choosing to keep our government closed to protect illegal immigrants rather than the American people.”

The statement concluded by stating that while Trump does not want a shutdown, he will not back down.

“The President does not want the government to remain shut down, but he will not sign a proposal that does not first prioritize our county’s safety and security,” it said. 

“No end in sight to the President’s government shutdown,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) tweeted on Thursday. “He’s taken our government hostage over his outrageous demand for a $5 billion border wall that would be both wasteful and ineffective.”

Trump earlier Thursday claimed that most of the hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed or forced to work without pay due to the shutdown are Democrats. 

“Have the Democrats finally realized that we desperately need Border Security and a Wall on the Southern Border. Need to stop Drugs, Human Trafficking, Gang Members & Criminals from coming into our Country,” he tweeted. “Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?”

The House passed a bill with $5.7 billion in border funding, including money for a wall, as well as $8.7 billion in emergency disaster aid last week, but the bill was viewed as dead on arrival in the Senate. Earlier in the week the Senate passed a measure to keep border security funding at current levels, with no money for Trump’s border wall. That measure was approved by voice vote.

Both chambers are controlled by Republicans, but Democrats will take over the House on Jan. 3. Thursday’s developments strengthened the odds that nothing will happen until the turnover. 

Democratic leaders have said they won’t go beyond $1.3 billion in annual funding for border fencing.

The White House has floated $2.1 billion, which was rejected by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) last week.

Conservative lawmakers have been adamant in their push for Trump to refrain from caving on his demands for $5 billion in border wall funding.

Roughly 420,000 federal workers have been working without pay while another 380,000 have been furloughed. The shutdown began last Saturday, days before the Christmas recess.