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U.S. Government Shutdown Starting on January 20, 2018

posted by takyon on Saturday January 20 2018, @05:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the limited-government dept.

takyon writes:

After 10 PM EST on Friday, The U.S. Senate rejected a deal that would fund the U.S. government for another month:

Only five Democrats voted to advance the bill — Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.), who are all up for reelection this year in states carried by President Trump in 2016 election, and newly-elected Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.).

Republicans were also not united, as Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) also voted against advancing the legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is battling brain cancer, was absent.

The procedural vote remained open late Friday, though it needed 60 votes to pass and was well short of that number with 48 senators voting against it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer continued to negotiate after the vote opened (archive), but no deal has been reached yet. As of midnight (5 minutes before this story went live), the government shutdown was in effect.

At Wikipedia: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Government shutdowns in the United States.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:01AM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:01AM (#625097) Journal

    I'm still pretty sure that the UK Conservative Party cannot cause an US government shutdown.

    But then, maybe the Declaration of Independence was just fake news. ;-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @06:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @06:27PM (#625230)

    USA: master of negotiation

    As we barrel towards a government shutdown, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that one of the crucial reasons for the impasse is that we just don’t know what President Trump would need in the way of realistic concessions from Democrats that might induce him to agree to a deal protecting the “dreamers.”

    In fact, it’s not even clear that the White House or even Trump himself know the answer to this question. And so, if we have a government shutdown, Trump’s profound cluelessness about the issues, and the degree to which this renders him susceptible to manipulation by the cynical immigration hard-liners around him, may be key reasons why.

    I’m told that in a series of meetings between Democratic and GOP leaders and Trump administration officials, Democrats repeatedly pressed their counterparts to make a counter-offer, after Trump rejected the bipartisan deal reached recently that would legalize the dreamers in exchange for some concessions. They have gotten nothing serious in response, I’m told.

    UK: easiest negotiation ever

    With just 18 months until Britain is set to exit the EU, the man at the very top of the negotiations has seemingly admitted that the government doesn't know what it wants from the talks.

    The Brexit Secretary David Davis was speaking to one of Germany's largest newspapers, Die Welt, about the current state of affairs between Britain and Brussels.

    Davis explained that there was progress being made in the talks, but that the EU had imposed too tight a mandate on their chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.

    "We'd like him at least to prepare for the future relationship. Some people say progress is slow. By EU standards this negotiation has been lightening fast," Davis said to Die Welt.

    One sticking point that has delayed progress to the next round of talks has been the ongoing debate surrounding the "divorce bill".

    The bill is what the EU says that the UK should pay as a share of money that's already been committed to various projects. There is no official bill yet decided and any amount will be a matter for negotiations.

    Numerous figures have been mentioned in recent months, ranging from as little as €1bn to €100bn. Last month, Davis was adamant the prospect of the UK paying €50bn to the EU was "nonsense".

    But when Die Welt asked about the figure he skirted around the question, stating that "it's a negotiation."

    But one notable aspect from his answer was that he appeared to suggest that the British government wasn't sure of what it wanted out of the crucial Brexit talks.

    In his answer about the divorce bill, Davis said: "It's a negotiation and we're going through the process at the moment of assessing, do the technical work on the commitments. We'll then make a political judgement on what we think is realistic and sensible."

    This statement, a year and a half after the EU referendum suggests that the government still hasn't worked out what it thinks is a "realistic and sensible" route for exiting the EU, and with negotiation time fast running out, the pressure is on Whitehall to prevent a cliffedge scenario.