US government on brink of first shutdown in almost 7 years during partisan standoff – Chicago Tribune
Washington – A partisan confrontation on health care and expenses threatens to trigger the first closure of the US government in almost seven years, Democrats and Republicans in the congress unable to find an agreement while thousands of federal workers are northern
The government will close at 12:01 p.m. Wednesday if the Senate does not transmit a measure of the Chamber which would extend federal funding for seven weeks while the legislators finished their work on annual expenditure invoices. The Democrats of the Senate say that they will not vote for this unless the Republicans include an extension of expired health care services, among other requests. President Donald Trump and his republican colleagues say they will not negotiate, arguing that it is a “clean” bill that should be not controversial.
It is not known if each side flashes before the deadline.
“It is only the president who can do it. We know that he is directing the show here,” the Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said on Tuesday morning after a bipartite meeting in the White House the day before little apparent progress. Schumer said the Republicans are trying to “intimidate” the Democrats by refusing to negotiate.
“The Republicans have until midnight tonight to become serious with us,” said Schumer.
Trump published a false mocking video of democrats after the meeting. “They lost the elections in a landslide, and they don’t change,” Trump said on Tuesday morning.
Although the partisan impassements of public spending are frequent in Washington, the current impasse occurs while Democrats see a rare opportunity to use their lever effect to achieve political goals and their basic voters spoil a fight with Trump. Republicans who have a majority of 53-47 in the Senate would probably need at least eight votes of democrats to end an obstacle and adopt the bill with 60 votes, because the republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky should vote against this.
The last closure took place in the first term of Trump, from December 2018 to January 2019, when he demanded that the Congress will give him money for his American border wall. Trump withdrew after 35 days – the longest closure of all time – in the middle of intensification of airport delays and lacked wages for federal workers.
No White House agreement
The Bipartite Blanche meeting on Monday was the first of Trump with the four Congress leaders since the White House retirement for its second term. But Trump clearly indicated that he was little interested in negotiations.
“Their ideas are not very good,” said Trump about Democrats before the meeting.
Schumer had seemed to hope that Trump could be open to an agreement. He then told journalists that the group had “had frank and frank discussions” on health care. He said Trump “was not aware” of the health insurance cost potential to skyrocketing once the tax credits on enlarged affordable care expires on December 31.
But Trump did not seem to be ready for serious talks. A few hours later, Trump published a false video of Schumer and the Democratic Chef of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber from their real press conference outside the White House after the meeting. In the modified video, a voice that looks like Schumer’s voice makes fun of the Democrats and Jeffries stands next to him with a sombrero cartoon and the mustache. Mexican music plays in the background.
During a press conference on the Capitole steps on Tuesday morning, Jeffries said it was a “racist and false IA incentive video”.
Schumer said that “we have less than a day to understand this” and Trump is lying on the internet “like a 10 -year -old child”.
Democrats’ health care requires
Millions of people could face higher insurance premiums if health care subsidies expire at the end of the year. The Congress first set them up in 2021 during the COVVI-19 pandemic, to extend the coverage of low-income and average income people who buy health insurance through the affordable care law.
Democrats say they want subsidies to be immediately extended. They also demanded that the Republicans reversed the Medicaid cuts which were promulgated as part of Trump’s “big and beautiful bill” this summer and so that the White House promises that it will not move to cancel the expenses adopted by the Congress.
“We are not going to support a bill in favor of republican spending that continues to empty the health care of everyday Americans,” said Jeffries on Monday.
The head of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, put pressure on the Democrats to vote for the financing bill and take the debate on tax credits later. Some Republicans are open to prolonging tax credits, but many are strongly opposed. Thune said the Republicans would like new limits to enlarged subsidies – something that Democrats would probably not accept.
In a back and forth with Schumer on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday morning, Thune said that the Republicans “are happy to solve the ACA problem” and proposed to negotiate with the Democrats-if they would vote to keep the government open until November 21. Thune said Democrats “have the same lever effect at that time” as they do now.
A crucial and unusual vote for Democrats
Democrats are in an uncomfortable position for a party that has long denounced closures as useless and destructive, and we do not know how or when it would end. But party activists and voters argued that Democrats have to do something to resist Trump.
Some groups called for the resignation of Schumer in March after he and nine other Democrats voted to break a balance sheet and allow a financing bill led by the Republicans to move on to a final vote.
Schumer then said that he had voted to keep the government open because a closure would have aggravated things when Trump’s administration reduced government jobs. He now says that he believes that things have changed, including the passage this summer of the Massive Gop Tax Bust Bill which reduced Medicaid.
Some of the Democrats who voted with Schumer in March to keep the government open were still hope for a compromise. Michigan senator Gary Peters said on Monday that there was a time before the deadline on Wednesday.
“Many things can happen in this place in a short time,” said Peters.
Stop preparations begin
The challenges are enormous for federal workers across the country, because the White House declared last week to the agencies that they should consider “a reduction in force” for many federal programs if the government stops.
This means that workers who are not deemed essential could be dismissed instead of simply contry. Anyway, most would not be paid.
Trump said on Tuesday that “we can do a lot” of layoffs, “and it’s only because of the Democrats”.
Trump budget director Russ Vought told the White House journalists that a closure would be managed “appropriately, but it is something that can all be avoided” if the Democrats of the Senate accepted the bill adopted by the Chamber.
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