A closure of the American government seems anything but inevitable and it is increasingly worrying that the Trump administration is about to use it as an opportunity to launch mass layoffs of federal employees.
It is now less than 48 hours before the deadline of Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. so that the Congress approves a spending resolution before the start of a new exercise and that the government discretionary expenditure tap is deactivated.
News emerged during the weekend that the American president will meet the Republican leaders and Democrats of Congress on Monday afternoon, but the two parties warned of interpretation as a sign of an imminent case.
While the dead ends threatening a closure have become so routine in the United States that you might be tempted to yawn, the recent unprecedented flexion of Donald Trump of presidential powers offers many reasons to believe that he could be played as never before.
William Resh, professor at the Georgia State University who studied closures, says that it fears that this version is only a simple temporary disturbance for certain federal services.
“If the past closings were a high chicken game, it promises to be something different,” Resh told CBC News.
The proof for this comes in a directive of the Board of the Management and Budget of the White House, the administration branch which oversees expenses in federal agencies and reports directly to the president.
The memo orders the agencies to prepare what are called “strength reductions” – an understatement for mass layoffs – in programs that do not comply with the president’s priorities “.
Vehicle to eliminate staff
This means that closure could become “a vehicle to eliminate the whole segments of the parts of the workforce that are not ideologically aligned with the president,” said Resh.
This tactic differs in particular from the way in which federal agencies have managed the previous closures, by putting non -essential officials such as the staff of the national parks and the clerks in the internal income service on temporary leave.
The US government closures occur when the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House cannot agree on a budget. Although the Republicans currently control the three, the party is seven unless the 60 votes required to obtain a resolution of spending via the Senate, which makes necessary bipartite agreements.
These negotiations often go over, but have led to a real closure only Three times since 2000Two of them during Trump’s first term.
Peter Loge, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs of George Washington University, says what will make this stop different is Trump “acting much more authoritarian” than in his first visit to the White House.
Lodge is certain that a closure will occur, largely because he thinks that the Democrats have no real lever effect to stop it.
“Much of the Republican direction, and I expect President Trump and those closest to him want to close,” said Lodge in an interview.
During a closure, more precisely known as “funding ditch“The whole government continues to function. The essential services required by law remain in place. But the power to decide which jobs and which agencies are dispensable largely rests with the White House.
Lodge says that Republicans think they can persuade voters that Democrats are to blame for what is happening.
There are signs that Trump and his allies are already trying to throw this job.
“These people are crazy, the Democrats,” said Trump outside the White House on Friday when a journalist asked for comments on the possibility of closing the government.
“If he has to stop, he will have to stop. But they are the ones who stop him.”
Trump cancels the weekend meeting, go to golf
The chief of the democratic minority of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber says that the Republicans should take the blame because they hold the Congress of the Presidency and the Control.
“The Republicans determined that they wanted to close the government and hurt the American people. It is an unacceptable and irresponsible position,” said Jeffries at a press conference last week.
Democrats describe the republican plan as an assault against affordable health care for millions of Americans. The key to their requests is an extension of Obama’s health insurance tax credits which are ready to expire.
Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, who directs the Democrats du Senate, had a meeting planned with the president for this weekend to discuss the budgetary dead end, but Trump announced in an article on the social networks that he had canceled it. He spent the weekend in Golf.
The president should now sit on Monday afternoon with Jeffries, Schumer and their republican counterparts – the president of the Chamber Mike Johnson and the head of the majority of the Senate John Thune.
But the tone entering the meeting remains polarized.
“Compromise on what?
Thune rejected the requests of Democrats as “liberal things of special interest” in an interview on the NBC Meet the press.
“Compromise on what?” Thune bristled when the host Kristen Welker asked the Republican to compromise to avoid closing.
“What the Democrats have done here is to take the federal government as a hostage – and by extension the American people – to try to get an entire list of things they want,” said Thune.
In the same program, Schumer called the meeting “only a first step” and said it would only work if the Republicans are not serious about the negotiation.
“If the president of this meeting will complain and simply shout to the Democrats and speak of all his alleged grievances and say that, that and the other thing, we will do nothing,” said Schumer.
In an apparent escalation of the attacks by US President Donald Trump against his political enemies, former FBI director James Comey has now been charged with criminal charges. For the National, Lyndsay Duncombe de CBC exhibits a calendar in the way it has reached this point.
For Democrats, there is no simple political formula on how to sail in this dead end.
In the spring, faced with a similar budgetary deadline, Schumer sold, allowing republican expenditure measures by the congress and took the heat of certain Democrats for not having resisted Trump.
But if this current impasse results in a closure that triggers permanent cuts in the federal labor, the Democrats are likely to carry it politically.
Lodge says that Trump’s will to let the closure occur is motivated by the desire to punish his opponents.
“President Trump clearly said that he would punish the American people to get what he wants politically,” said Lodge.
He describes this as “a partisan political band that goes against what practically all the other presidents of the history of the Republicans have done”.
The last closure, in 2019, was also the longest in the history of the United States, of 34 days. He largely included Trump’s requests for billions of dollars in funding to build his promised border wall, at a time when the Democrats held a majority in the House.
