Washington DC [US], October 18 : US President Donald Trump on Friday called the federal shutdown as 'democrat shutdown.'He alleged that the democrats are preventing the influx of illegal immigrants to the US.
"The shutdown continues. The Republican Party is not going to pay a trillion and a half dollars to illegal immigrants coming into our country, coming in for a lot of reasons, coming in from prisons, from jails, from all over the place, from Venezuela, many countries. We're not going to do that. So the shutdown continues. It's a Democrat shutdown. It's a Schumer shutdown because his career has failed, and it's over," he said.
The government shutdown in in its eighteenth day with no end in sight, after senators failed for the 10th time to resolve the impasse in votes on Thursday, CBS News reported.
The shutdown is now the third-longest funding lapse in modern history, eclipsed only by the shutdowns of 1995 and 2018-19. Shutdowns are a relatively recent phenomenon, having only begun in their current form in 1980.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune sent the upper chamber home for the weekend after Thursday's votes, meaning the funding lapse will continue until at least Monday. The House has been out of session since September 19 with no plans to return until the shutdown is over, as per CBS News.
Thune's office said on Thursday that he will bring up a bill next week that would pay federal employees and military service members who have continued to work during the shutdown. But passing the legislation would require help from Democrats, who blocked a long-term defense spending bill from advancing.
The agency that oversees the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile told a top GOP lawmaker that it plans to furlough 80% of its staff in the coming days to address a funding shortfall. "These are not employees that you want to go home," said Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, CBS News reported.
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