US govt reopened after Senate deal

Democrats vote reluctantly to temporarily pay for operations

NEW YORK - The first government shutdown of Donald Trump's presidency spanned 69 hours.

That was as long as Democrats could, or would, stand united against a Republican-backed temporary spending bill in pursuit of a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.

When the high-stakes game of chicken ended on Monday evening, liberal activists were furious, Republicans were giddy, and vulnerable Senate Democrats were quietly relieved.

The episode exposed familiar political vulnerabilities for both parties although perhaps more painfully for Democrats.

"There are no winners. There are absolutely no winners. The question is who lost the most," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz.

Democrats' dilemma

In the short term at least, Senate Democrats led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were pounded on Monday for giving into GOP demands in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to address immigration in the coming weeks.

After two days of bickering and freezing up the US government, Democrats signed off on a spending bill not dramatically differently from the one on the table on Friday.

No one was angrier than immigration activists, union officials and other liberal leaders, who, just a few days earlier, had helped rally Senate Democrats to take a risky political stand to protect young immigrants known as "Dreamers" from deportation.

"Last week, I was moved to tears of joy when Democrats stood up and fought for progressive values and for Dreamers. Today, I am moved to tears of disappointment and anger that Democrats blinked," said Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigration advocacy group America's Voice.

If such disappointment persists and deflates enthusiasm in the November midterm elections, it could be a long-standing problem for Democrats. But ultimately Democratic senators bet they had bigger worries, namely turning off disaffected voters in Trump country.

For Senate Democrats running for re-election in states Trump won in 2016, the Republican charge that Democrats closed the government for the benefit of "illegal immigrants" was potent. Republicans were unusually disciplined on this messaging and Trump stayed on script.

The longer the shutdown went on, the more problematic it would become for those Democrats.

"In my focus groups, the public blamed the Democrats, even as they were angry at Donald Trump," Luntz said.

Hard choices

Yet the GOP success may be short-lived.

The legislation that ended the shutdown will fund the federal government through Feb 8 for less than three weeks. If there is no immigration deal by then, McConnell said he would allow the Senate to bring up legislation addressing the fate of those 700,000 young immigrants in the country illegally who had voluntarily enrolled in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which Trump ended last fall.

There is no more explosive issue for Republicans than immigration.

Many conservatives dismiss any legal protection for the young immigrants as "amnesty". And while some Senate Republicans have promised to support a DACA fix, the issue is far more divisive in the House, where a relatively small group of hardline conservatives wield significant clout.

House conservatives in 2013 helped kill legislation that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the country illegally.

AP - Xinhua

(China Daily 01/24/2018 page12)