The GOP-controlled Senate may take its third vote on proceeding to a likely unconstitutional bill that won’t reopen government.
America’s longest-ever partial government shutdown gets longer and more harmful by the minute, but the one man with the power to bypass the president and resolve the situation is too busy focusing of arguing about Middle East politics to do anything.
Monday marks the 24th day of the government shutdown, making it the longest in U.S. history by three days. Trump’s refusal to fund large portions of the government unless Congress gives him billions of dollars to pay for a border wall he’d repeatedly promised would be funded entirely by Mexico has already cost the nation’s economy billions of dollars, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers struggling to make ends meet without paychecks, and left vital government services like food safety inspection effectively on pause.
The Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives (along with a dozen fed-up Republicans) has passed multiple bills to reopen all or parts of the government immediately. While these bills could become law with a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, notwithstanding any potential Trump veto, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has repeatedly blocked attempts to even give them a vote on the senate floor, calling them a waste of time.
View the complete January 14 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.