WASHINGTON, Jan 12, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The US government shutdown that has
left 800,000 federal employees without salaries as a result of President
Donald Trump’s row with Democrats over building a Mexico border wall entered
a record 22nd day Saturday.
The Democrats’ refusal to approve $5.7 billion demanded by Trump for the
wall project has paralyzed Washington, with the president retaliating by
refusing to sign off on budgets for swaths of government departments
unrelated to the dispute.
As a result, workers as diverse as FBI agents, air traffic controllers and
museum staff, did not receive paychecks Friday.
The partial shutdown of the government became the longest on record at
midnight Friday (0500 GMT Saturday), when it overtook the 21-day stretch in
1995-1996, under president Bill Clinton.
Trump on Friday backed off a series of previous threats to end the deadlock
by declaring a national emergency and attempting to secure the funds without
congressional approval.
“I’m not going to do it so fast,” he said at a White House meeting.
Trump described an emergency declaration as the “easy way out” and said
Congress had to step up to the responsibility of approving the $5.7 billion.
“If they can’t do it… I will declare a national emergency. I have the
absolute right,” he insisted.
Until now, Trump had suggested numerous times that he was getting closer to
taking the controversial decision.
Only minutes earlier, powerful Republican ally Senator Lindsey Graham
tweeted after talks with Trump: “Mr. President, Declare a national emergency
NOW.”
It was not clear what made Trump change course.
But Trump himself acknowledged in the White House meeting that an attempt
to claim emergency powers would likely end up in legal battles going all the
way to the Supreme Court.
Opponents say that a unilateral move by the president over the sensitive
border issue would be constitutional overreach and set a dangerous precedent
in similar controversies.
– ‘Under siege’ –
The standoff has turned into a test of political ego, particularly for
Trump, who came into office boasting of his deal making powers and making an
aggressive border policy the keystone of his nationalist agenda.
Democrats, meanwhile, seem determined at all costs to prevent a president
who relishes campaign rally chants of “build the wall!” from getting a win.
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the US-Mexican frontier presents
major challenges, ranging from the hyper-violent Mexican drug trade to the
plight of asylum seekers and poor migrants seeking new lives in the world’s
richest country.
There’s also little debate that border walls are needed: about a third of
the frontier is already fenced off.
But Trump has turned his single-minded push for more walls into a political
crusade seen by opponents as a stunt to stoke xenophobia in his right-wing
voter base, while wilfully ignoring the border’s complex realities.
For Trump, who visited the Texas border with Mexico on Thursday, the border
situation amounts to an invasion by criminals that can only be solved by more
walls.
“We have a country that’s under siege,” he told the local officials in the
White House.
Some studies show that illegal immigrants generally commit fewer crimes
than people born in the United States, although not everyone agrees on this.
More certain is that while narcotics do enter the country across remote
sections of the border, most are sneaked through heavily guarded checkpoints
in vehicles, the government’s own Drug Enforcement Administration said in a
2017 report.
It said that most smuggling is done “through US ports of entry (POEs) in
passenger vehicles with concealed compartments or commingled with legitimate
goods on tractor trailers.”
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives and a
key figure in opposing Trump’s agenda, said money should be spent in many
areas of border security, but not on walls.
“We need to look at the facts,” she said.
But Trump accused the Democrats of only wanting to score points against him
with a view to the 2020 presidential elections.
“They think, ‘Gee, we can hurt Trump,'” he said. “The Democrats are just
following politics.”