The United States entered yesterday the second day of a government shutdown gridlocking Washington that the White House budget director said could persist into the new year and the next Congress.
A budget deal to end the partial shutdown – which forced several key US agencies to cease operations at 12.01am (0501 GMT) on Saturday – appears a distant prospect as Congress adjourned for the weekend ahead of Christmas.
“It’s very possible that this shutdown will go beyond the 28th and into the new Congress,” White House budget director Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday of the impasse over funding for President Donald Trump’s wall on the US-Mexico border.
He said that the White House made a “counter-offer” to Democrats on funding for border security that fell between the Democratic offer of $1.3bn and Trump’s demand for $5bn.
As part of those talks on Saturday, Vice-President Mike Pence offered to drop the demand for $5bn for a border wall, substituting instead $2.1bn, ABC News reported citing unnamed sources.
Mulvaney sought to shift blame for the partial shutdown to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic nominee for speaker of the US House of Representatives, saying that she might hold up negotiations to ensure she secures the position.
“I think she’s in that unfortunate position of being beholden to her left wing to where she cannot be seen as agreeing with the president on anything until after she is speaker,” Mulvaney said. “If that’s the case, again, there’s a chance we go into the next Congress.”
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill disputed that account, saying in a statement: “As Mr Mulvaney well knows, House Democrats are united in their opposition to the President’s immoral, expensive and ineffective wall.”
The White House should “stop the posturing and start serious bipartisan talks”, Hammill said.
Mulvaney did acknowledge that Trump’s adamance on the wall played a role.
“This is what Washington looks like when you have a president who refuses to sort of go along to get along,” he said.
It is the third partial government shutdown of the year, even though Trump’s own Republican Party still controls both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Democrats will take control of the House on January 3.
Trump, who cancelled his holiday vacation to Florida due to the budget wrangling, has dug in on his demand for $5bn to build the border wall, a signature campaign promise and part of his effort to reduce illegal immigration.
“The only way to stop drugs, gangs, human trafficking, criminal elements and much else from coming into our Country is with a Wall or Barrier,” he tweeted yesterday. “Drones and all of the rest are wonderful and lots of fun, but it is only a good old fashioned Wall that works!”
He had tweeted on Saturday that he was in the White House “working hard” to find a solution but that “it could be a long stay”.
However, Democrats remain staunchly opposed, and in the absence of a deal, federal funds for dozens of agencies lapsed.
Nearly 400,000 workers have been sent home while an additional 420,000 whose jobs were deemed essential – including Border Patrol officers and airport security workers – are remaining on the job without pay.
There were few signs yesterday of any forward movement and, with most lawmakers home for the holidays, some indications that a solution was as far away as ever.
“The Democrats offered us $1.6bn a couple weeks ago,” Mulvaney said on ABC. “Then they offered the president $1.3bn this week.”
“That’s a negotiation that seems like it’s going in the wrong direction,” said the current budget director set to become Trump’s acting chief of staff next week.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, blamed the shutdown on a “remarkable two-week temper tantrum” by the president, who he said could reopen the government if he would “abandon the wall”.
Even some Republicans expressed consternation over what they dubbed an avoidable crisis.
“The Democrats easily would support more border funding, border security, they’ve said that” if a broader deal could be reached, Republican Senator Bob Corker said on CNN.
“This is something that is unnecessary. It’s a spectacle and, candidly, it’s juvenile,” said Corker, speaking in his final days before stepping down from Congress. “This is a made-up fight so that the president can look like he’s fighting.”
He said that a deal is easily within reach if the two sides were prepared to compromise, particularly on Democrats’ demand to protect the status of the “Dreamers” – Latinos who, as children, arrived illegally in the United States with their parents.
Mulvaney said that Trump was “willing to discuss a larger immigration solution”, but he seemed cool to the possibility of offering citizenship to the “Dreamers”, saying that it was not a popular idea among many Republicans.
The year-end holidays have made the shutdown’s visible effects slow to appear but they will gradually spread.
Visitors to the capital’s park-like National Mall, home to attractions including war memorials and the towering Washington Monument, were among the first to feel it.
Several criticised the shutdown, which added to an air of chaos in a capital still reeling from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis’s resignation last week over Trump policies.
Jeffrey Grignon, a Wisconsin healthcare worker, said politicians of both parties “need to stop acting like children”.
But another visitor, Howard Vander Griend of Tennessee, predicted that Trump will come out a winner: “I think he will get what he wants and I think that’s a good thing.”
Tourists could still visit open-air sites on the Mall but found public restrooms locked.
The White House Visitor Centre and the National Archives – home to the US Constitution and other historic documents – were also closed.
Some national parks have shuttered completely, but New York’s governor provided funding to allow the Statue of Liberty monument to remain open.
Most critical US security functions remain operational.
About three-quarters of the government, including the military and the Department of Health and Human Services, is fully funded until the end of September 2019, leaving 25% unfunded.