Page 16 - Florida Sentinel 1-25-19

Politics Around The Nation
Government Shutdown:
Updates On Where Things Stand
Trash overflowing from a garbage can outside the Washing- ton Monument on Sunday.
Many are being affeceted by the shutdown.
Virginia’s Black Lt. Gov. Serves Up A Silent Protest As Senators Pay Tribute To Robert E. Lee
When Virginia state Sena- tors honored Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Fri- day, Lt. Gov. Justin Fair- fax, only the second African American elected to statewide office in Virginia, briefly left the dais for the second year in a row in a silent protest. He believes the decision to honor Lee is “unfortunate but not surprising.”
Sen. Richard H. Stu- art (R-King George) report- edly marked Lee’s 212th birthday with praise for “a great Virginian and a great American.”
But Fairfax, a descendant of slaves, said in an interview afterward, “I believe there are certain people in history we should honor that way in the Senate . . . and I don’t believe that he is one of them.”
He added, “I think it’s very divisive to do what was done there, particularly in light of the history that we’re now commemorating — 400 years since the first enslaved Africans came to the Com-
LT. GOV. JUSTIN FAIRFAX
monwealth of Virginia.” “And to do that in this year in particular was very hurtful to a lot of people,” Fairfax said. “It does not move us for- ward, it does not bring us to- gether. And so I wanted to do my part to make it clear that I
don’t condone it.”
For most Americans, last
Friday marked the last work- day before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. In Virginia, the state holiday celebrates Lee and Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
Day 32: What’s been Happening?
It has been a month since the first day of the govern- ment shutdown.
Furloughed federal em- ployees have started part- time jobs with delivery and ride-hailing apps and applied for other opportunities, such as yoga-instructor positions, to try to make ends meet without a government pay- check.
Some of the most vulnera- ble Americans — including the homeless, the elderly and people one crisis away from the streets — are feeling the burden. Without payments from the Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment, nonprofit groups that support low-income renters are also struggling. Many other social safety net pro- grams are facing similar crises.
As a bone-chilling flash freeze swept through the Midwest and Northeast over the holiday weekend, hun- dreds of thousands of federal workers remain furloughed, and some continued to work without pay, including fore- casters at the National Weather Service. Veterans of the emergency manage- ment field are worried about longer-term trouble, too.
Both Sides Made Offers But No Negotiations
On Saturday, President. Trump proposed to end the partial government shut- down after Democrats ex- tended a proposal of their own on Friday, having added $1 billion in border spend- ing to their offer. If he got $5.7 billion for a border wall, Mr. Trump said, he would restore for three years the protections known as De- ferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Tem- porary Protected Status, or
T.P.S.
Republicans had hoped
his plan would put Democ- rats in a corner, but Democ- rats called it a nonstarter, prompting attacks from the president on the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. And her relationship with her counterpart in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who presumably would need to make a deal with her, is fraught. Immigrants in Texas are skeptical of the president’s proposal.
While Pres. Trump has projected confidence in pub- lic, he has expressed private frustration over what he views as negative coverage. Many Republicans concede, also in private, that he has made strategic errors and al- lowed dysfunction to con- tinue.
Last week things got per- sonal, too: Ms. Pelosi threatened to cancel the pres- ident’s State of the Union ad- dress; Mr. Trump retaliated by denying her military transport to Afghanistan. And then she accused the Trump administration of leaking her plans to fly com- mercial, prompting her topostpone the trip, citing se- curity concerns.
How long will Republican lawmakers continue to back him? While support for the wall among Republican vot- ers appears to have hard- ened, broadly the border wall remains unpopular.
Federal Workers Are Feeling The Pressure
When it began, the shut- down left about 800,000 fed- eral workers without pay, with just over half continuing to work, including members of the Coast Guard and food safety inspectors. The num- ber of people working has grown as the Trump admin- istration reinterprets long- standing rules,often to the
benefit of the president’s base.
Many federal workers have filed for unemployment benefits. In Washington, local programs have sprouted up to support the city’s large, struggling federal work force. Nation- ally, an informal network of businesses has also mobilized to ease the pain.
But such stories under- score an irony of the shut- down: Federal jobs have long been seen as being among the most stable, even though now they are anything but.
Federal courts, which have been open and operat- ing despite the shutdown, could be close to running out of money. Some courts have delayed civil cases, and court- appointed lawyers have not been paid at all.
The Rippling Effects On The Economy
The White House ad- mitted recently that the shut- down has had a far greater toll on the United States economy than previously thought.
Americans are confident in their own finances, but have become increasingly concerned about the econ- omy overall during the shut- down, according to a recent poll conducted for The New York Times by the on- line research firm Survey- Monkey.
Low-income Americans whose leases are subsidized by the government are wor- ried about their rent because the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is closed, cannot make payments to landlords.
Legions of contractors are out of work and, unlike fed- eral employees working with- out pay, they have no expectation of recovering the missed wages.
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