The partial Government shutdown over budget spending started Friday of last week and seems to be continuing into next week
After the House of Representatives approved the bill that will fund the Mexico border wall, the bill still had to pass over in Senate, but they refused it last Friday when the shutdown of the Government began.
The bill for the wall funding needs to have 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate, where Republicans currently have only 51. Although a sum of $1.3B was offered for border security on Friday by the Democrats, President Trump won’t accept less than $5B.
A partial shutdown began on Saturday for nine of fifteen federal departments including State, Homeland Security, Transportation, Agriculture, and Justice after their funding lapsed. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are either working unpaid, or are on unpaid leave.
Due to this shutdown some national parks are closed, most of housing department workers are on unpaid leave, some federal courts have suspended their work on civil cases, and the FDA will pause routine inspections. Meanwhile, 75% of remaining federal government: defense, veterans affairs, labour, as well as education departments are fully funded until September 2019.
The House and the Senate met on Thursday this week but only for a few minutes, but no steps were taken to end the shutdown. Both sides of the Congress seem to have accepted that the dispute will continue into 2019.
It is most likely that the shutdown impasse will continue at least until January 3rd when new members of Congress will be sworn in, having been elected in November’s mid-term elections. Then, since the Democrats will have a majority in the House of Representatives they stated they will reopen the federal departments and agencies that were hit by the partial shutdown.
Source: bbc.com
