CS = Chuck Schumer
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The government careened toward shutdown Friday night in a chaotic close to Donald Trump’s first year as president, as Democrats and Republicans preemptively traded blame while still struggling to find some accord before a deadline at the stroke of midnight.
The lawmakers and Trump’s White House mounted last-ditch negotiations to stave off what had come to appear as the inevitable, with the parties in stare-down mode over federal spending and proposals to protect some 700,000 younger immigrants from deportation.
After hours of negotiating, the Senate scheduled a late-night vote on a House-passed plan. It appeared likely to fail.
The election-year standoff marked a test of the president’s much vaunted deal-making skills — and of both parties’ political fortitude. Republicans, who control both Congress and the White House, faced the prospect of being blamed for the display of dysfunction — just the fourth shutdown in a quarter-century. It could also threaten to slow any GOP momentum, one month after passage of the party’s signature tax cut law.
Democrats, too, risked being labeled obstructionist. Republicans branded the confrontation a “Schumer shutdown” and argued that Democrats were harming fellow Americans to protect “illegal immigrants.”
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