From December 22 the administrative paralysis has been taken. Eight hundred thousand federal workers without salary. Miami Airport has closed a terminal due to a lack of security officers. At home the employees of NASA
From today, January 12, we can say that the current one is the longest shutdown in history: we are in fact the 22nd day of partial closure of the US government, and for the first time the federal workers have not received the expected salaries. It is estimated that around 800 thousand federal employees are on leave or work without pay, putting at risk various sectors, from airport security to environmental protection. The last government arrest lasted so long – 21 days – was the one that lasted from December 1995 to January 1996, when the then President Bill Clinton and the Congress, controlled by the Grand Old Party (Gop) were grilled short. Friday Trump continued to speak with the Democrats, including the president of the Chamber of Deputies Nancy Pelosi and the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, but the positions between the two fronts do not seem close to an agreement and the shutdown became so officially the longest in the history of the country.
The closures
If there will be no negotiations over the weekend, shutdown will enter its fourth week from Monday. No 9 of the 15 departments were funded, including agriculture, internal security, transport, interiors and justice. And so the first consequences start to exist. For example, Miami Airport will close one of its terminals for most of the day on Saturday, Sunday and Monday to ensure that security checks are properly manned. The unpaid security officers, in fact, will stay at home. Some national park facilities are closed, as are the Smithsonian museums and the Washington National Zoo. Almost all NASA employees will remain at home, as will those of the Internal Revenue Service, which elaborates tax returns and issues reimbursements (even if the administration claims that reimbursements will be given out even during shutdown). Some employees of the state and national security departments instead continue to work even without a salary. The House and Senate have voted a decree – to be signed by Trump – to ensure that all federal employees can be paid retroactively after the shutdown ends. “An easy solution for me would be to declare a national emergency, but I do not intend to do it so quickly because it is up to Congress to do it,” said Donald Trump during the round table on border security.
What is that
Shutdown is a procedure provided by the Antideficiency Act and provides that, without approval of the appropriations, non-essential government activities must be “blocked” until the approval of a refinancing by the Congress. It occurs when there is no agreement on the approval of funding to the various departments and therefore there are no funds for the expenses of the federal government. In the history of the USA this administrative paralysis has occurred on other occasions: in 1980, in 1995, in 1996, in 2013 and in 2018. In the last year there were actually three shutdowns: one between 20 and 23 January, on Daca, Obama’s provision to protect illegal minors; another in February, for a disagreement on budget policies, but lasted only a few hours; and the last one, which is still going on, took place on December 22, when Trump announced that he would not give the green light to funding until Congress passed his request for $ 5.7 billion to build a wall along the border between United States and Mexico. The Democrats refused and so shutdown started.
How much
Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor’s agency has announced that the closure of government activities has already cost 3.6 billion, and that if we add another two weeks, it will reach 6 billion. Or even more than what the White House asks for to build the Wall. But Trump does not give up: he has already canceled his presence at the Economic Forum in Davos and, according to Wall Street sources Jounal, the `ghost writers’ who work on the State of the Union speech, are also contemplating the hypothesis that for that date , January 29, the «shutdown» is still standing.
source Il Corriere della Sera
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