Government shuts down over border security debate

As the final days of the calendar year draw to a close, the days of the partial federal government shutdown continue with no end in sight.
The shutdown began at midnight on Saturday, December 29, as the United States Congress and President Donald Trump could not reach a budgetary agreement and reached its first full business day on Wednesday.
Twenty-five percent of the government and roughly 800,000 employees are affected by the shutdown. The majority of those employees affected are on the job but will not get paid until the shutdown is resolved.
The stalemate between the two branches of government hinge on the funding of President Trump’s proposed wall along the Mexican border.
The president said on Christmas Day that the shutdown will continue indefinitely until Senate Democrats agree to his plans. “I can’t tell you when the government’s going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall or fence, whatever they’d like to call it,” President Trump said.
He added, “I’ll call it whatever they want, but it’s all the same thing.”
The Democratic position on the issue is to secure the border with advanced technology instead of erecting an actual wall.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget bill prior to it being received in the Senate. In the House’s bill there is an amendment calling for $5.7 billion for the wall’s funding.
Praising the House’s amendment is Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District which includes Evangeline Parish.
“Neglecting our responsibility and leaving nearly all border security funding decisions to Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat-led House next year is not what the American people sent us here to do,” Congressman Johnson said in a statement on Thursday, December 20. “The House has now passed a measure that will avoid a government shutdown and ensure we are much closer to a secure southern border. Democrats’ feigned outrage is a cheap ploy to their open-border base. They say they want border security but refuse to fund it. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to put aside partisan politics and fulfill their duty to the American people by passing the amended legislation.”
Louisiana’s only Democrat on Capitol Hill also released a statement on the government shutdown over the wall.
“President Trump and Congressional Republicans have placed our country in a shutdown that could have easily been avoided,” Representative Cedric Richmond of the 2nd Congressional District said Saturday, December 22. “They decided it was more important to put over 400,000 federal workers in jeopardy, many of whom will be forced to work without pay, all because he failed to get support over a wall that does absolutely nothing to keep Americans safer. Trump’s wish for a government shutdown that he repeatedly asked for was finally granted while countless hard working civil servants will suffer this holiday season.”
The statement continued, “Even the President’s own Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney blasted his wall calling it ‘absurd’ and ‘childish’. He even went on to say, ‘The fence doesn’t stop anybody who really wants to get across...You go under, you go around, you go through it.’ Because of the Trump Shutdown, the landmark Violence Against Women Act has also expired. We have a responsibility to uplift and protect women in this country, and Trump, yet again, decided to undermine the group of people who are the very bedrock of our communities, families, and workplaces.”
“When we enter the 116th Congress in the beginning of January, my Democratic colleagues and I will do everything in our power to reverse this senseless shutdown.”