Congress meets; no one budges as parties’ leaders point fingers

This sign was posted Saturday at the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in New York after the government shutdown began at midnight Friday.
This sign was posted Saturday at the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in New York after the government shutdown began at midnight Friday.

WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats showed little sign of ending their standoff over immigration and spending Saturday as Americans awoke to the first day of a government shutdown and Congress held a weekend session to show voters it was trying to resolve the stalemate.

The Senate met in a rare weekend session at noon -- less than 11 hours after it went into recess. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, took the floor. "Well, here we are," he declared. "Here we are. Day 1 of the Senate Democrats' government shutdown. We did everything we could to stop them."

He went on to point a finger at his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, saying Schumer had created an "unfortunate hostage situation and led his party into this untenable position."

Schumer, in turn, blamed McConnell and President Donald Trump for the shutdown.

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The president "has turned blowing up bipartisan agreements into an art form," Schumer said, adding that "negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O."

Trump and McConnell remained in regular contact Saturday afternoon about a possible solution to the government shutdown, the first time a furlough of federal employees has occurred under single-party control of Congress and the White House.

Trump made light of the situation in a tweet that said Democrats "wanted to give me a nice present" to mark the start of his second year in office. He blamed Democrats for "holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can't let that happen!"

Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly also worked the phones Saturday. White House negotiators, legislative affairs director Marc Short and budget chief Mick Mulvaney went to Capitol Hill to meet with House Republicans, who emerged holding fast to their stance that they would not negotiate while the government was shut down.

"It's like a 2-year-old temper tantrum," Short told reporters at the White House.

So far, Trump, McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have struck a defiant tone, refusing to consider any of the Democratic demands on immigration or other issues until there is a bipartisan agreement to reopen the federal government.

Trump's campaign released an ad Saturday saying that Democrats who stand in the way of cracking down on illegal immigration "will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants."

Trump tweeted that Democrats "could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead." In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November "in order to power through this mess." He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation.

Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the first anniversary of his inauguration. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen moderate lawmakers met Saturday afternoon in the office of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to try to advance a solution, according to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. Collins led a similar bipartisan group in 2013 that worked to resolve that year's 16-day shutdown.

Moderates are "trying to find a pathway forward," Manchin said. He said the group hoped to present a proposal to Senate leaders either later Saturday or today.

"It's a travesty if we're still shut down after tomorrow," Manchin said Saturday. "It's a travesty."

The moderate senators are trying to reach a deal on immigration in hopes that, after a three-week spending deal is approved, McConnell would allow it to come up for a vote alongside a longer-term spending plan.

That plan could include funding for storm-ravaged states, reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program and an implicit agreement to hold votes at some point in the coming weeks on a bipartisan immigration deal, according to senators involved in the discussions.

STOPGAP MEASURE

Republicans began the day hopeful they might pick up Democratic support for a three-week version and bring the episode to a quick end. Democrats are insisting on an alternative lasting only several days and say they'll kill the three-week version when the Senate votes on it by early Monday.

Democrats said they viewed the three-week plan as a way to stall negotiations over the future of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, whose protections expire in March. The program protects youths who were brought to the U.S. as children and are now here illegally.

McConnell had vowed on the Senate floor late Saturday to take up a new spending plan by Monday morning, or sooner, that would keep government open through Feb. 8 but would not contain a solution for young illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

While House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters that his caucus supports the idea from Senate Republicans, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said her members would not support it until the parties agree to "terms of engagement" on a longer-term spending plan to last the rest of the fiscal year.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a go-between in discussions between Senate Republicans and Democrats, tried to build momentum for a plan to fund the government through Feb. 8. The key, he argued, is to ensure the Senate moves to an immigration debate with an open amendment process immediately after that date.

"I'm confident we can find a solution to Border Security/DACA once we start the process," he said in a statement.

Top House Republicans said they have ruled out negotiating on immigration policy until the shutdown ends.

"Senate Democrats shut down this government, and now Senate Democrats need to open this government back up," Ryan said in a midday speech.

"The American people cannot begin to understand why the Senate Democratic leader thinks the entire government should be shut down until he gets his way on illegal immigration," McConnell said.

Schumer said voters will fault Trump and the GOP for the shutdown. He blamed Trump for reneging on a near deal that Schumer said the two men had approached during a White House meeting Friday.

The White House told a different story. Briefing reporters at the White House on Saturday, Mulvaney disputed Schumer's claim that he offered Trump his desired border wall funding during their meeting.

"Mr. Schumer has to up his game and be more honest with the president of the United States if we are going to be seeing progress," Mulvaney said.

Schumer spokesman Matt House fired back on Twitter that Mulvaney was not present for the meeting and was "not telling the truth" about what happened.

Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, neither chamber voted on a measure to open the government.

In the Senate, McConnell sought to bring up the four-week spending bill that failed Friday night; Democrats blocked the attempt. Democrats asked to vote on a bill guaranteeing federal workers their back pay for the period of the shutdown; McConnell objected, saying they deserve a full funding bill.

In the House, Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., displayed a poster-size photo of Schumer with a 2013 quote calling that shutdown "the politics of idiocy." Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., the presiding officer, allowed the poster, but Democrats objected and forced a roll call vote. Lawmakers voted to allow the display.

Both houses were set to meet again this afternoon.

EFFECT ON AMERICANS

The fourth government shutdown in a quarter-century began at the stroke of midnight at the start of a weekend, so many of the immediate effects will be muted for most Americans.

But pressure on Republicans could mount with the new workweek Monday as the impact of the federal shutdown becomes more apparent.

Social Security and most other safety-net programs are unaffected by the lapse in federal spending authority. Critical government functions will continue, with uniformed service members, health inspectors and law enforcement officers set to work without pay. But if no deal is reached before Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed.

While the Statue of Liberty and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell were closed Saturday, visitors had access to other national parks like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tweeted a photo of himself talking to students at the World War II Memorial in Washington, blocks from the White House. He also tweeted that "Not all national parks are fully open but we're working hard to make as much accessible as is safely possible."

The frustration of tourists in the nation's capital was a dominant theme of the 2013 shutdown, and a political rallying cry for Republicans who said then-President Barack Obama was deliberately exacerbating the shutdown's effects.

No similar dynamic was playing out this time after the government ran out of funding.

That was partly by luck and partly by design: The timing of the latest shutdown meant that institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Arlington National Cemetery, Smithsonian museums and National Zoo had money to keep operating at least through Saturday and today.

At the same time, Trump has directed federal officials to blunt the front-line effects of the shutdown by allowing continued access to parks and open-air monuments -- including the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and war memorials -- in the District of Columbia.

Critics said the decision to keep the parks open smacked of politics. "Gates would be open and people could enter, but there would be virtually no staff on hand to protect them or the parks' resources," said Theresa Pierno, the president and chief executive of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram, Jill Colvin, Richard Lardner, Matthew Daly, Catherine Lucey, Darlene Superville and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; by Robert Costa, Paul Kane, Karoun Demirjian, Elise Viebeck, Juliet Eilperin, Peter Jamison and Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post; and by Thomas Kaplan, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mark Landler of The New York Times.

A Section on 01/21/2018

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