Trump’s Crisis Management: Month of Shutdown Costs More Than Mexico Border Wall
Trump’s Crisis Management: Month of Shutdown Costs More Than Mexico Border Wall
The confrontation between US President Donald Trump and the Democrats over security issues on the southern border turned into the longest shutdown in country’s history.
The closure of federal agencies and institutions made hundreds of thousands of US citizens go on a forced leave, and has caused enormous economic damage, which, according to experts, is risking to exceed the cost of the "wall of discord" along the US border with Mexico.
Record
The current shutdown, which began on December 22, has already broken the record, which was set during the Bill Clinton administration in late 1995-early 1996 and lasted for 21 days.
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At midnight on Tuesday, the "shutdown counters" showed that it had been going on for 30 days and 16 hours, and there was no reason to expect it would end any time soon.
It is expected that the Congress would continue discussions and vote on the bill that will allow the government to resume its work this week. However, as local media reported, since the plans proposed by the Republicans and the Democrats differ from each other, the chances of a fast compromise are low and it is impossible to foresee the end of the shutdown.
Trump’s failed attempt to propose a compromise plan on Saturday is an illustration of that: Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had refused to support him even before the president announced the details.
According to Trump’s plan, the congress should allocate $5.7 billion to build the controversial wall on the US-Mexico border in exchange for extending legal status for certain categories of migrants. But the Democrats, who received a majority in the chamber, are firmly against financing construction of the wall even after the president agreed to build it only in critical areas of the border, and not across the entire boarder, as he had earlier said.