The US Government on Friday appeared to be hurtling towards a shutdown with the Senate Democrats threatening to vote against a must-pass spending bill in the absence of immediate legislative protection of deportation for about 8,00,00 young illegal immigrants.
With no advance on an overall immigration package, notably on President Donald Trump’s insistence on simultaneous funding for his pet border wall project, Democrats and Republicans have locked horns in the US Senate in the run-up to the Friday midnight deadline.
Although the Republican-dominated House of Representatives passed late on Thursday the stopgap funding bill for four weeks to stave off a shutdown, Senate Democrats have served notice that they will vote against the measure that needs to be passed by 60 votes, whereas Republicans just have bare majority of 51 in the 100-member chamber. An all-out blame game is already on in full swing with the two parties slamming each other for the impasse, regardless of the grim warnings that a government shutdown will see all federal government departments and agencies cease operation and furlough hundreds of thousands of employees.
“Shutdown comingIJ We need more Republican victories in 2018!” Trump tweeted Friday morning as he came down hard on Democrats. In an apparent retaliation for the Democrats’ refusal to support his wall project, he commented: “They want illegal immigration and weak borders.”
A much-harried Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said the Democrats’ “fixation on illegal immigration has already blocked us from making progress on long-term spending talks”, adding that the same fixation now has them threatening to filibuster funding for the government. “My Democratic colleagues’ demands on illegal immigration, at the behest of their far-left base, have crowded out all other important business,” McConnell said.