United States

The 2018–19 government shutdown

Even before the new Congress began its term, Pelosi and the Democrats locked horns with Trump over his demand that the new budget to fund the continuing operation of the federal government include $5.7 billion to pay for construction of the border wall that had been the central promise of his campaign for the presidency. With funding for the federal government due to expire on December 21, Trump held a televised meeting with Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on December 11 at which the president said that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security.” Trump refused to sign a short-term budget bill passed by the Senate that did not include his desired funding, and the Senate was then unable to pass a bill sent to it by the still Republican-controlled House of Representatives that included $5.7 billion for the wall. As a result, on December 22 a partial shutdown of the federal government began that would become the longest such shutdown in the country’s history.

As Trump continued to argue that the country faced a border crisis involving an influx of illegal drugs and an invasion of “bad people,” Democrats countered that the construction of a wall would be an overly expensive ineffective solution to the immigration problem. Instead, they proposed that the budget include $1.6 billion for border fencing, cameras, and technology to aid immigration control. As some 800,000 federal employees went without paychecks, negotiations dragged on fruitlessly. Trump eventually downgraded his demand for the wall to a concrete and steel “barrier” and offered a three-year extension for individuals living in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy in exchange for wall funding, but Democrats refused to discuss the wall until the government was reopened. In the meantime, Pelosi took steps to prevent Trump from delivering the State of the Union address in the Capitol, scheduled for January 29, 2019. With opinion polling indicating that more Americans blamed Trump for the shutdown than blamed the Democrats, the president relented on January 25, ending the shutdown after 35 days. On February 14 both houses of Congress adopted a budget package negotiated by a special bipartisan committee that included $1.375 billion for 55 miles (88 km) of new border fences and another $1.7 billion for additional border security. The next day Trump controversially declared a national emergency to address the “security crisis” on the country’s southern border and sought to divert $6.7 billion from military construction, counternarcotics operations, and Department of the Treasury asset forfeiture funds for wall building.