5 Days Until Government Shutdown
December 5, 2018
If Republicans and Democrats can’t settle their current deadlock over President Donald Trump’s demands to fund the border wall, the government will face a partial shutdown.
Government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security will lose their funding on December 7th if Congress does nothing. Talks amongst Republican and Democratic mediators have fallen apart since Friday, and things haven’t progressed this weekend at all.
Lawmakers were greatly satisfied when they successfully passed brand new spending bills for areas such as defense, education and energy. However, Congress couldn’t complete seven other appropriation bills before midterms. In result, they were all compacted into a short-term decision which they set to expire on December 7th.
Currently, the most considerable issue is funding for Donald’s Trump’s wall, the one he’s been promising since the start of his political campaign. He says that he would allow the government to shut down if the spending package doesn’t comprise of $5 Billion for his wall. Democrats may have bagged $1.67 Billion towards the enhancement of border security, but that isn’t enough to satisfy the president.
Although the eagerness to get home could motivate lawmakers to hurry the completion of the bills, the problem of Trump threatening to sign nothing if the border wall receives no funds still hangs in the air. It wouldn’t be groundbreaking if Congress worked through the holidays. For example, in 2009, Congress stayed to pass the Affordable Care Act that was later passed on Christmas Eve. And in 2012, when both chambers spent New Year’s Eve negotiating a deal.