The impasse over Trunmp’s border wall funding demands continues as about one-fourth of the federal government is shuttered, with no particular resolution in sight. Democrats will gain leverage once they take control of the House in January.
The federal government has been partially shut down since Saturday, but since roughly two-thirds of federal workers are not directly affected, and it comes amid holidays, planned vacations, and the general low ebb of national life between Christmas and New Year’s, it isn’t biting very deeply right now. The estimated 380,000 furloughed federal employees assume from previous experience that they will be paid retroactively once the shutdown ends, so aside from cash-flow issues, they are in essence receiving paid vacation.
That, and the eternal and largely symbolic partisan gap over the president’s cartoonish border-wall funding demands are making this particular government shutdown one in which no one is racing to achieve a resolution. Having flipped and flopped over his determination to obtain $5 billion in border wall funding (accompanied by flips and flops over the very definition of “wall”), the president is at present making a show of resolution, using the impasse once again to deepen his solidarity with the wall-loving “base” of his party, whose tribunes were dismayed when it looked like he might cave to keep the despised government open.
