On Thursday, the members of Congress in Washington did not come to any conclusion: the Democratic senators had previously been presented with new proposals from the White House, which they rejected. The paper apparently hardly addressed the Democrats’ demands.
Chuck Schumer, Democratic minority leader, spoke of a “warning shot” to the Republicans: “The Democrats will not issue a free pass for chaos.” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut) also accused the Department of Homeland Security of not following the law.
An agreement on Friday has therefore become highly unlikely because there will probably be no substantive negotiations or a vote. Numerous representatives from both parties traveled to the Munich Security Conference over the weekend. There are no meetings scheduled in Washington next week, so no quick breakthrough is expected.
This would result in the third budget freeze in just a few months. It was only last fall that the longest shutdown in American history was ended after 43 days. After the interim budget passed at the time expired, there was another four-day shutdown at the end of January.
If there were to be another budget freeze, the ability of Minister Kristi Noem’s authority to act would be restricted. However, this would not apply to ICE and CBP: The Republicans approved an additional ten billion dollars for both departments last year. Even during the previous shutdowns, work largely continued there.
Instead, other areas such as civil protection, air traffic control or the coast guard would be affected. For the employees there, this would mean that they would either be furloughed or would have to continue working without pay. According to a government paper from September, almost 23,000 of the more than 270,000 employees would temporarily stop working.
In view of the impending shutdown, the Republicans had hoped for a minimal solution. The Republican majority leader in the Senate, John Thune, recently said that an interim budget could first be agreed with the Democrats. If this were to happen, at least the financing would not be at risk during the ongoing negotiations. However, the Democrats rejected that too.
