The
top senator from US President Donald Trump's party urged lawmakers to
"step back from the brink" as they gathered Sunday for a crunch vote to
keep the government shutdown from stretching into the coming work week.
Hundreds
of thousands of federal employees are set to stay home without pay as
of Monday morning following the dramatic collapse Friday night of talks
to agree on an urgent funding measure.
DIVISIONS
The
shutdown cast a huge shadow over the first anniversary of Trump's
inauguration as president and highlighted the deep divisions between
Republicans and Democrats.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that the shutdown would "get a
lot worse" if federal workers have to stay home without pay.
"Today would be a good day to end it,"
McConnell said from the Senate floor during a rare Sunday session aimed
at hashing out a deal ahead of a vote he said would take place at 1am
(0600 GMT) Monday, unless progress is made sooner.
Lawmakers
have traded bitter recriminations for the failure to pass a stop-gap
funding measure, and McConnell once again sought to pin the blame on
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
VOTE
Trump
early Sunday encouraged the Senate's Republican leaders to invoke the
"nuclear option" — a procedural manoeuvre to change the chamber's rules
to allow passage of a budget by a simple majority of 51 votes to end the
shutdown.
"If stalemate continues,
Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long
term budget, no C.R.'s!" he tweeted, referring to the stop-gap funding
measure.
But Senate leaders have been
wary of such a move in the past, as it could come back to haunt them
the next time the other party holds a majority.
White
House budget director Mick Mulvaney on Sunday accused some Democrats of
wanting to "deny the president sort of the victory lap of the
anniversary of his inauguration" — echoing a complaint Trump made on
Twitter the day before.
"There's
other Democrats who want to see the president give the State of the
Union during a shutdown," Mulvaney said on Fox, referring to the
nationally televised address Trump is to deliver on January 30.
IMMIGRATION
At the heart of the dispute is the thorny issue of undocumented immigration.
Democrats
have accused Republicans of poisoning chances of a deal and pandering
to Trump's populist base by refusing to back a programme that protects
an estimated 700,000 "Dreamers" — undocumented immigrants who arrived as
children — from deportation.
Schumer said he and Democrats were willing to compromise, but Trump "can't take yes for an answer — that's why we're here."
"I'm
willing to seal the deal, to sit and work right now with the president
or anyone he designates — let's get it done," Schumer said.
Trump
has said Democrats are "far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than
they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern
Border."
SERVICES
Essential
federal services and military activity are continuing, but even
active-duty troops will not be paid until a deal is reached to reopen
the US government.
There have been
four government shutdowns since 1990. In the last one, in 2013, more
than 800,000 government workers were put on temporary leave.
"We're
just in a holding pattern. We just have to wait and see. It's scary,"
Noelle Joll, a 50-year-old furloughed US government employee, told AFP
in Washington.
A deal had appeared
likely on Friday afternoon, when Trump — who has touted himself as a
master negotiator — seemed to be close to an agreement with Schumer on
protecting Dreamers.
But no such
compromise was in the language that reached Congress for a stop-gap
motion to keep the government open for four more weeks while a final
arrangement is discussed. And Republicans failed to win enough
Democratic support in the Senate to bring it to a vote.
FUNDING
Republicans
have a tenuous one-seat majority in the Senate, and on Friday needed to
lure some Democrats to their side to get a 60-vote supermajority to
bring the motion forward. They fell 10 votes short.
The
measure brought to Congress would have extended federal funding until
February 16 and reauthorised for six years a health insurance programme
for poor children — a long-time Democratic objective.
But it left out any action on the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals programme, known as DACA, which affects Dreamers.
White House officials insisted there was no urgency to fix DACA, which expires March 5.
Highlighting
the deep political polarisation, crowds estimated to number in the
hundreds of thousands took to the streets of major US cities including
Los Angeles, New York and Washington over the weekend to march against
the president and his policies and express support for women's rights.
Protesters
hoisted placards with messages including "Fight like a girl," "A
woman's place is in the White House" and "Elect a clown, expect a
circus."
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