Everything You Need to Know About the U.S. Shutdown
Everything You Need to Know About the U.S. Shutdown
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President Donald Trump is finally getting to preside over the government shutdown he’s hinted for months he might want.
A year to the day after Trump took office, the U.S. government officially entered a partial shutdown early today as Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans blocked a funding bill amid an impasse over immigration.
The White House and federal agencies spent yesterday mapping out the closure, with a goal of as little disruption as possible. Mail will be delivered; airport control towers will be staffed; and the Interior Department hopes to keep national parks open. Critical national security functions continue.
Trump and his aides were typically defiant, with his press secretary calling Democrats “obstructionist losers, not legislators” and saying there’d be no immigration negotiations until the government reopens.
Having stumbled into a shutdown both parties tried to avoid, lawmakers seem eager to keep it brief. For Trump, the stakes are particularly high. An extended closure could blunt the momentum of his December tax victory, put the U.S. on the backfoot in its dealings with foreign adversaries and muddy the message of his first State of the Union address in nine days.
Shutdown Headlines
Blame game | Republicans are calling it the “Schumer Shutdown,” but at least one early poll suggests nearly half of Americans think Trump and his party — not Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — are responsible. Republicans, who control the White House and both chambers of Congress, have a reason to try and deflect. Voters largely blamed them for the last shutdown four years ago on Barack Obama’s watch, even though they only had a House majority at the time.
Open vs. closed | In ways large and small, this shutdown will touch almost every aspect of American life — from visitors to national parks being unable to use the full-service restrooms to the Internal Revenue Service halting audits. While military personnel are expected to report for duty, neither they nor families of those killed in the line of duty will get paid. Defense systems and weapons maintenance may also be suspended. Vice President Mike Pence, en route to the Middle East, urged military members heading to Kuwait to stay focused, saying politicians in Washington would “get this thing figured out.”
Market chilling effect? | Asian trading opens tomorrow evening Washington time and will offer a first glimpse of how disruptive the stalemate will be. U.S. stocks yesterday shrugged off the drama, rising to all-time highs following a report regulators are close to further easing banking rules. Trump routinely takes credit for stock market gains.
What’s next | The House and Senate are both scheduled to be in session today, and Trump has scrapped plans to attend a fundraising gala at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to remain in Washington as negotiators work to find a solution. Check Bloomberg Politics and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates throughout the weekend.
And finally ... The last shutdown, in October 2013, lasted 16 days and largely centered on Republican objections to Obamacare. Before that, it had been 17 years since a federal funding lapse. Partisan battles between President Bill Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress led to a pair of shutdowns in late 1995, the latter stretching into the early days of 1996. To find a shutdown that occurred when one party controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, you’d have to go back to the Carter administration.
--With assistance from Stuart Biggs
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Caroline Alexander at calexander1@bloomberg.net, Karl Maier
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