White House tells agencies to prepare for a shutdown

The prospect of a government shutdown is now ’50-50,’ one of the president’s chief aides said Friday as the Senate sputtered into gear.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Friday morning that the White House House was directing agencies to begin implementing their plans for a lapse in funding.

‘I think it’s ratcheted up,’ Mulvaney told reporters asking about the prospects of a shutdown at the White House. ‘The bottom line is we’re working to make sure there is no shutdown but if the Senate or the House can’t get together to finalize a deal we’ll be ready.’

 

The prospect of a government shutdown is now ’50-50,’ one of the president’s chief aides said Friday as the Senate sputtered into gear

If the government’s spending authority were to lapse, federal employees who are considered ‘non-essential’ will be sent home until a budget deal is signed. They are typically paid retroactively.

Shutdowns in 1995, 1996 and 2013 put roughly 800,000 government workers on furlough.

The White House, Congress, State Department and Pentagon would remain online, although staff who are not critical to the operation would be sent home until furhter notice.

Trump has claimed that the military would be cut deepest by a shutdown. However, troops would still report for duty – they just might not be paid on time.

Congress was teetering on the edge of a government shutdown on Friday after the House of Representatives passed a stopgap funding bill on a 230-197 vote but the Senate did not.

The upper chamber went into recess on Thursday evening with Senate Democrats poised to block the legislation.

Senate Republicans are finding it practically impossible to wrangle 60 votes, the number needed to end debate. With just a slim 51-49 majority, they need the unlikely help of Democrats to move forward. 

Donald Trump foreshadowed failure in a Friday morning tweet and hinted at the political bickering to come as Washington squabbled over who would be to blame for a midnight failure.

‘Government Funding Bill past [sic] last night in the House of Representatives,’ the president wrote on Twitter.

‘Now Democrats are needed if it is to pass in the Senate – but they want illegal immigration and weak borders. Shutdown coming? We need more Republican victories in 2018!’ 

President Donald Trump suggested Friday morning that a government shutdown might be coming by day's end, and prepared to blame Democrats in the Senate who are threatening to block the latest stopgap funding bill

President Donald Trump suggested Friday morning that a government shutdown might be coming by day’s end, and prepared to blame Democrats in the Senate who are threatening to block the latest stopgap funding bill

Trump visited the Pentagon on Thursday amid a looming budget shutdown that he said would be 'devastating' for the military; he's decided to stay in Washington until a Continuing Resolution is passed in the Senate, instead of jetting to Palm Beach on Friday afternoon

Trump visited the Pentagon on Thursday amid a looming budget shutdown that he said would be ‘devastating’ for the military; he’s decided to stay in Washington until a Continuing Resolution is passed in the Senate, instead of jetting to Palm Beach on Friday afternoon

The federal government will run out of money at midnight, on the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, if the Senate does not pass the House bill or some other resolution to keep the lights running.

At least 10 Democrats would have to cross party lines to keep that from happening.

Senate Republican leaders will likely call vote after vote on Friday, forcing Democrats and reluctant members of their own party to stand and be counted over and over again until a funding measure passes.

But the Democrats, who are insisting that a permanent version of the ‘DACA’ immigration program be passed as a condition of keeping the government open, haven’t yet blinked.

Trump was scheduled to depart the White House on Friday afternoon for his Mar-a-Lago resort club in Palm Beach, Florida. But the optics of leaving town while the government runs off the rails were too much for his advisers.

A White House official told reporters in the morning that the president ‘will not be going to Florida until the CR passes,’ referring to the ‘Continuing Resolution’ needed to keep the money flowing.

Twenty-six Democratic senators are up for re-election in November, including 10 in Republican-leaning states that Trump won in 2016. That has given Republicans the political will to stand their ground and force the issue.  

‘It really is regrettable that the Democrats are willing to shut down the government,’ presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Friday morning on the Fox News Channel. 

'It really is regrettable that the Democrats are willing to shut down the government,' presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Friday morning on the Fox News Channel

‘It really is regrettable that the Democrats are willing to shut down the government,’ presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Friday morning on the Fox News Channel

Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo said on CNN that Republicans ‘should man up, stand up for what they believe in and force the Democrats to reject the continuing resolution and force a government shutdown.’

But the funding measure passed by the House on Thursday night also has at least four Republican opponents in the Senate, raising the possibility that lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress might pass a temporary measure that funds the government for just four or five days while party leaders twist their arms.

‘The House just did the right thing – for our men and women in uniform AND for the millions of children who rely on CHIP,’ tweeted House Speaker Paul Ryan following the vote, referring to a popular children’s health insurance program.

Ryan urged Senate Democrats to ‘do the right thing by the American people.’

Trump on Thursday contributed to the chaos with a tweet that suggested he no longer supports the House’s funding extension.

The president rejected a bargaining chip that House Speaker Paul Ryan had been pushing – a six-year renewal of the Children’s Health Insurance Program – and blasted conciliatory language on immigration his chief of staff had used to appease a group of congressional Democrats.

At the Pentagon, Trump told reporters a shut down  ‘could very well’ take place on Friday if Democrats do not come around to his position.  

Before the vote was passed Trump tweeted that it was 'so important for our country - our Military needs it!'

Before the vote was passed Trump tweeted that it was ‘so important for our country – our Military needs it!’

The finger-pointing had already begun, with each side blaming the other for a failure to reach a budget compromise after three previous funding extensions.

‘A government shutdown will be devastating to our military… something the Dems care very little about!’ Trump tweeted in the morning.

And yet in another tweet, Trump criticized the Republican short-term funding measure, opposing a sweetener intended to make it hard for Democrats to vote against it.

The sweetener is a six-year extension of CHIP, a program Democrats have worked hard to protect.

At the Pentagon, Trump turned his visit into an opportunity to rail against Democrats holding a longer-term bill that would do away with government-mandated budget caps, freeing up the military to spend all of the money it was authorized to spend by Congress last year

At the Pentagon, Trump turned his visit into an opportunity to rail against Democrats holding a longer-term bill that would do away with government-mandated budget caps, freeing up the military to spend all of the money it was authorized to spend by Congress last year

Not only does the position put him in conflict with his own White House, but it also threatens to derail his party's efforts to pass a stop-gap bill once again

Not only does the position put him in conflict with his own White House, but it also threatens to derail his party’s efforts to pass a stop-gap bill once again

But Trump insisted: ‘CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!’

Republican Senator John Cornyn quickly corrected Trump in a counter-tweet: ‘The current house Continuing Resolution package has a six-year extension of CHIP, not a 30 day extension.’

Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, dismissed the Republicans move on CHIP as ‘like giving you a bowl of doggie doo, put a cherry on top sundae. This is nothing.’

‘This CHIP should have been done in September,’ she told reporters.

Up against a similar deadline last month, lawmakers had passed a short-term resolution to keep the federal government funded until January 20.

Many Democrats are already opposed to another short-term fix, leaving Republicans to rely on their own divided caucus to advance the measure.

If it fails, Democrats will gain greater leverage to insist on a funding compromise that includes protection from deportation for the so-called ‘Dreamers,’ the estimated 700,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

Negotiations on a bipartisan compromise that includes a fix on DACA collapsed in acrimony at a White House meeting last week.

Trump’s reported reference to African nations and Haiti as ‘shithole countries’ ignited a still-smoldering political firestorm.

Trump claimed in his remarks before a meeting with military leaders that was supposedly part of a nuclear posture review that Democrats are acting out because they are trying to blunt the success of his tax deal

Trump claimed in his remarks before a meeting with military leaders that was supposedly part of a nuclear posture review that Democrats are acting out because they are trying to blunt the success of his tax deal

White House chief of staff John Kelly met Wednesday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to make the case that Trump had ‘evolved’ on his signature campaign promise to build a wall the length of the US border.

Funding for border security, but not a full-blown wall, was part of the bipartisan budget compromise presented at last week’s contentious White House talks.

Participants at the meeting with Kelly quoted the retired general and former head of the Department of Homeland Security as saying Trump was not ‘fully informed’ when he made the wall promise.

But Trump hit back on Twitter Thursday: ‘The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,’ he wrote.

‘If there is no Wall, there is no Deal!’ Trump said in another tweet that described Mexico as ‘now rated the most dangerous country in the world.’

Mexico once again said it would not pay for the wall, despite Trump’s repeated insistence that it will.

The mixed messages from the White House prompted a rebuke Wednesday from frustrated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

‘I’m looking for something that President Trump supports, and he’s not yet indicated what measure he’s willing to sign,’ McConnell told reporters.

‘As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels.’



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