Senate Democrats reached an agreement with their Republican counterparts on Monday to reopen the US government, ending a three-day impasse.
Democrats agreed to fund the government for three weeks after Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, promised to introduce legislation to protect the “Dreamers”, 800,000 people brought to the US illegally as children who face deportation after President Donald Trump cancelled an Obama-era programme, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allowed young undocumented immigrants to stay in the US. Mr Trump gave Congress until early March to find a permanent solution to the issue.
Mr McConnell pledged on Monday morning that he would permit a debate on immigration in February if the issue, as part of a further spending package, had not been resolved by then.
The government shut down on early Saturday after Democrats refused to support a four-week spending bill, because it did nothing to protect the “Dreamers”. Many federal agencies ceased operations and hundreds of thousands federal employees were off work, though so-called essential personnel kept working. The government shutdown occurred when one party – Republicans in this case – control both houses of Congress and the White House.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Senate Democrat, said that he had struck a deal with Mr Trump during a White House luncheon meeting on Friday, offering significant concessions for the DACA legislation, including an agreement to meet Mr Trump’s demand for money for a wall between the United States and Mexico, which the president has long promised. The Trump White House, however, rejected the proposal hours later, saying it did not go far enough to limit immigration.
Mr Trump blamed Democrats for the impasse over a new short-term spending bill, while Democrats blamed Mr Trump’s erratic behaviour that made compromise impossible, branding the shutdown the “Trump Shutdown” (Republicans branded it the “Schumer Shutdown”).
A bipartisan group of more than 20 senators, some facing challenging re-election bids, met throughout the weekend in an effort to forge a compromise to prevent the shutdown from extending into the week and present it to Mr Schumer and Mr McConnell.
The longer the federal government is shut down, the bigger the economic impact as the government closure costs the economy productive work time and damages consumer and business confidence. The 16-day shutdown in October 2013 cut 0.3 percentage point off the annualised economic growth rate in the fourth quarter.
Photo: Senate Democrats
