Blame game heats up after govt shutdown

Little sign of progress on impasse as parties lock horns over immigration

US House and Senate met on Saturday, the first day of the federal government shutdown, in a move aimed at ending the impasse but ended up continuing a blame game between Republicans and Democrats.

The United States federal government defaulted into a shutdown past midnight on Friday after Senate Democrats voted against a stopgap measure to keep the government open until Feb 16, a bill that passed the House last Thursday.

The key issue that divided the two parties is the fate of some 800,000 Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought into the US as children.

Then-US president Barack Obama established the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program in 2012 to protect the illegal immigrants from deportation. The Trump administration rescinded the policy in September.

Democrats have insisted that any short-term spending bill must include protections of those immigrants. But White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Saturday that President Trump will not negotiate on immigration reform until Democrats stop playing games and reopen the government.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, is pushing for a new short-term spending bill, which will only fund the government until Feb 8, but there is no sign that the Democrats will take it on Sunday or possibly anytime soon without Republican commitment on the immigration issue.

Both parties want to appear strong in front of their core supporters ahead the November midterm elections, when all 435 seats in the House and 33 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. Republicans now control both chambers of the Congress and the White House.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, on Saturday continued to blame President Donald Trump for the government shutdown, saying "negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O".

Schumer met Trump at the White House on Friday for a lengthy meeting. The initial hope of reaching a deal evaporated after White House officials and Trump made new demands.

Republicans and Trump have blamed Schumer for the shutdown. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, took the floor on Saturday. "We do some crazy things in Washington, but this is utter madness," he said.

"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," Senate Majority Leader McConnell said.

The House and Senate are expected to convene again on Sunday.

The shutdown coincided with the one-year anniversary of the inauguration of President Trump, who was sworn in on Jan 20, 2017.

Trump was scheduled to attend an anniversary gala, with tickets being sold for more than $100,000 a pair, at his Florida estate of Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, but he cancelled the trip and stayed in the White House due to the shutdown.

The US president also published a rare op-ed on Washington Examiner on Saturday, touting the achievements in his first year in office.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Friday that his agency will manage a shutdown different from the Obama administration to be "much less impactful".

The shutdown in 2013 cost the US economy an estimated $20 billion, according to an estimate by Moody's Analytics.

Mulvaney revealed on Saturday that Trump's planned trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week is being assessed "on a day-by-day basis". Trump's America First policy is expected to clash with the overwhelmingly globalist view at Davos.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 01/22/2018 page12)