White House chief of staff says ‘absolutely cannot’ rule out another shutdown
The acting White House chief of staff says he “absolutely cannot” rule out the possibility of another government shutdown as a temporary deal that ended the last one in January is about to expire in a week.
“Is a shutdown entirely off the table? The answer is no,” Mick Mulvaney added, speaking on NBC’S “Meet the Press” program on Sunday.
A shutdown comes if Congress fails to pass the budget legislation for the next fiscal year or the president refuses to sign off on it.
The last shutdown lasted 35 days, the longest in the United States history.
The prolongation was prompted by disagreements between the Democrats and Republicans over President Donald Trump’s insistence that the budget include funding for a wall along the US-Mexican border to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The Democrats oppose the wall, calling it unnecessary and ineffective.
Trump finally agreed on January 25 to end the shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he had demanded for the wall, and instead, a three-week spending deal was reached to end the impasse.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Richard Shelby said disagreements over how to address Trump’s border security concerns bubbled away at Congress.
“The talks are stalled right now,” he told “Fox News Sunday,” rekindling fears that the deadlock could prompt another shutdown.
He said the sticking point was the Democrats’ desire to cap the number of the beds in detention facilities for people who enter the country illegally.
Also on Sunday, Trump attacked the Democrats’ demand, tweeting, “They are offering very little money for the desperately needed Border Wall & now, out of the blue, want a cap on convicted violent felons to be held in detention!”
On Friday, some on a special congressional negotiating panel tasked with reaching a budget deal said that if the deadlock continued, they would move to pass another stop-gap funding bill to avert another shutdown.
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