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Since the government did not set a budge by a certain date then the government shutdowns. This signals a shutdown on all budget transactions.

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Congress could not agree on  an appropriate funds.

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If the government does not agree on a spending budget then the government will run out of money. In addition, departments are closed and if they are closed for too long this will have a negative impact on the economy.

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The House and Senate has until April 28 to pass a spending bill or the government will run out of money.

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The House passes a short time frame bill to reopen the government and President Trump must sign it for the shutdown to end.

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January 19 - The Senate approves for a short-term spending period from late December to January 19. In addition, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act monitors social media and phone call to foreign nations til January 19.

January 30- President Trump will give his first State of the Union speech.

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The link for questions number 1 and 2.

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1. Agriculture - 40 percent of 95,383 workers. Farmers can't get loans processed. March food stamps could be cut.

2. Commerce - 87 percent of 47,896 workers. Reports from the Bureau of Economic Analysis are delayed.

3. Homeland Security - 13 percent of 232,860 workers. Companies can't verify a worker's immigration status.

4. Housing and Urban Development - 95 percent of 7,497 workers. Rental assistance for the elderly and disabled is delayed.

5. Interior - 78 percent of 68,469 workers. National Park maintenance has decreased. The Environmental Protection Agency would furlough 95 percent of 13,872 workers. It used reserve funds through December 28.

Democrats rejected the deal for three reasons. First, the courts already upheld DACA. Second, Trump is offering temporary protection in return for a permanent wall. Third, Democrats want the government reopened before negotiations begin.

The Democrat-controlled House will vote by January 25, 2019 to add $1 billion in additional border security funding. It targets ports of entry, advanced technology for scanning vehicles for drugs, and more immigration judges.

The Republican-controlled Senate is submitting a budget that contains wall funding. It adds $7.3 billion for additional border patrol and increased detention facilities. It adds $12.7 billion in disaster aid.

Erecting a wall on the rest of the border would stop 144,000 immigrants. It would raise incomes of low-skilled workers by 58 cents a year. It would cost $15 per American to build the wall.

But the wall would hurt the economy overall. Incomes of higher-skilled workers would fall by $7.60 a year. The U.S. economy would lose more than $4 billion a year. The same thing happened with the existing wall. Workers with college degrees lost $4.35 annually. As a result, the economy declined by $2.5 billion.

The conservative Heritage Foundation says the money would be better spent on technology and agents to prevent illegal crossings. It advocates more enforcement to apprehend immigrants who overstay their visas.

On January 22, Congress ended the shutdown. It passed a continuing resolution that expired at midnight on February 8, 2018. Republicans promised to work with Democrats on DACA legislation.

On February 9, the government shut down again, this time for five and a half hours. Senator Rand Paul objected to the bipartisan two-year spending bill. It added more than $300 billion to the debt.

Border Protection and Immigration, air traffic controls, and the Transportation Security Administration remain open. The Justice Department remains open, but gun permits are not be issued during a shutdown. The Postal Service has a separate source of funds, so mail continues to be delivered.

Here are the major departments that shut down:

Commerce, except National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Education.

Energy. Functions that oversee the safety of the nation's nuclear arsenal, dams, and transmission lines remain open.

Environmental Protection Agency.

Food and Drug Administration.

Health and Human Services.

Housing and Urban Development.

Interior, including National Parks.

Internal Revenue Service, except those processing tax returns.

Labor, including Bureau of Labor Statistics.

National Institute of Health.

Smithsonian.

Here are examples of when the federal government either shut down or narrowly avoided one.

2017. The government avoided a shutdown on April 28, 2017. That's when the continuing resolution, passed on September 30, 2016, expired. Congress hadn't allocated funds for the FY 2017 budget, which covered October 1, 2016, to September 30, 2017. The continuing resolution funded the government during the 2016 presidential election and transition. The Senate and House approved the spending bill on May 1, 2017. It appropriated $1.1 trillion in spending.

Many Republicans oppose the border wall. Those from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas face the most consequences. They say the wall won't work, especially without added security forces. Others worry about the impact on the environment in their states.

Democrats also oppose the wall. They would prefer to use the funds to keep Obamacare subsidies and the other domestic spending programs. They want to increase programs for opioid addiction and health care for coal miners.

For the continuing resolution to pass, the Trump administration withdrew its request for border wall funding. It also agreed to continue providing Obamacare subsidies.

2013. The government shutdown began on October 1, 2013. The Republican-controlled House submitted a continuing resolution without administrative funds for Obamacare. The Senate rejected the bill and sent one back that included Obamacare. The House ignored that bill. It sent one back that delayed the mandate that everyone should buy health insurance. It also deleted the subsidies for Congress and their staffers. The Senate ignored that bill and the government shut down.

Here's what happened each day of the shutdown:

October 1. TV news highlight how veterans can't visit the WWII Memorial and cancer patients can't take advantage of treatment trials at the National Institute of Health.

October 2. Republicans submit a funding bill that delays Obamacare for a year.

October 3. Obama calls on the House to vote on the Senate's continuing resolution.

October 4. Boehner considers negotiating a budget proposal that will fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. At the same time, he calls on the Senate to negotiate on Obamacare.

October 5. The secretary of Defense calls back furloughed civilian workers.

October 6. The House passes a bill to reimburse furloughed federal employees, even though they aren't working. But no one gets paid until a funding resolution is passed.

October 7. Boehner won't fund the government or raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats agree to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. These mandatory programs aren't even part of the discretionary budget that is shut down.

October 8. House Republicans propose a "Supercommittee" to negotiate a budget acceptable to both parties. But House Democrats want the shutdown ended and the debt ceiling raised before establishing such a committee. In addition, Senate Democrats might propose a stand-alone bill to raise the debt ceiling.

October 9. House Democrats meet with Boehner before meeting with Obama.

October 10. Boehner and a team of House Republicans meet with Obama. They proposed raising the debt ceiling for six weeks to allow time to negotiate.

October 11. House Republicans put together a budget in exchange for raising the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopening the government.

October 12. Talks between Boehner and Obama break down. The Senate creates a plan to force the House to an agreement, as it did during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis and the fiscal cliff crisis.

October 13. Senate bilateral negotiations continue. Republicans want to extend the debt ceiling for three months, fund the government at current levels for six months, establish a bipartisan Congressional committee to agree on spending cuts to Medicare, delay Obamacare's tax on medical devices for two years, and give agencies more leeway in implementing sequestration.

October 14. Senate Democrats want to increase spending by $70 billion on the sequestration cuts that hit in January. They want the debt ceiling raised for a year. Republicans want cuts in Medicare and Obamacare and a three- to six-month extension of the debt ceiling.

October 15. The House submits its own plan, which has thrown a wrench into the Senate's negotiations. Neither side of Congress will accept the other's proposal.

October 16. The House plan didn't get the support of Tea Party Republicans, so it was dropped. Speaker Boehner put the Senate plan to a vote, where it passed through Democrat and moderate Republican votes. The president signed it Wednesday night.

October 17. The bill raised the debt ceiling until February 7, 2014, and reopened the federal government until January 15, 2014. It set up a budget conference committee, led by Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc, to submit a unified budget to the president by December 15, 2013.

The Obama administration reported the shutdown slowed economic growth by 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent. It also cost 120,000 jobs. The government was unable to issue certificates for ships carrying U.S. exports and 200 drilling permits were delayed. Around 850,000 federal employees were furloughed each day.

Republicans gave up an earlier proposal of $61 billion in cuts in non-defense discretionary spending, including cuts to Planned Parenthood. This also allowed Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Bank Reform Act to remain unscathed. Their cuts would have cost 800,000 jobs. Democrats gave up on $1.7 billion in cuts to defense.

1995. The government shut down twice: November 13 to November 19, 1995, and December 5, 1995, to January 6, 1996. Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich won the Republican Party's 1994 Contract with America. It promised to slash funding and introduce a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

But no such amendment passed, so Gingrich went after Democratic President Bill Clinton's FY 1996 budget. He demanded steep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and other non-defense discretionary spending in return for raising the debt ceiling. To keep the United States from defaulting, a continuing resolution bill was passed until November 13. When no budget deal was reached, the government shut down until both sides agreed to balance the budget in seven years.

But they couldn't agree on which budget items would be cut by the time the resolution ended. The government shut down on December 15. By January 1996, both sides negotiated an agreement that cut some spending and raised some taxes, balancing the budget over the next seven years.

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Why the Government Shut Down and What Happens Next

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Agriculture - 40 percent of 95,383 workers. Farmers can't get loans processed. March food stamps could be cut. Commerce - 87 percent of 47,896 workers. Reports from the Bureau of Economic Analysis are delayed. Homeland Security - 13 percent of 232,860 workers. Companies can't verify a worker's immigration status.

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The link for questions number 3 and 4.

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Congress is barreling toward a government shutdown deadline.

The House and Senate have until midnight on April 28 to pass a spending bill or the federal government will run out of money and close its doors.

Despite controlling every lever of government, Republicans are somehow faced with the possibility that they can't get the votes together to keep the government open. Added to that, the shutdown deadline happens to coincide with President Donald Trump's 100-day mark, when journalists and historians assess what the White House has accomplished thus far.

Needless to say, a shutdown would be a very bad look.

For now, parties on the Hill are hasty to assure reporters that a shutdown is looking unlikely. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, made a move to avert a government shutdown late Wednesday night, introducing a continuing resolution to provide one week of stop-gap funding, effectively extending the shutdown deadline to May 5, to buy Congress more time to negotiate a spending bill. The House and Senate have to pass the resolution before the spending deadline to keep the government open.

House Speaker Paul Ryan told his conference it was his top priority to avoid a shutdown before everyone came back from recess. "A shutdown is not on the table," a GOP aide close to the Appropriations Committee said. Another GOP congressional aide put the odds of government shutdown somewhere between 5 and 15 percent. But many areas of funding are still being negotiated across the 11 different appropriations bills, a Democratic aide said.

If they can't get a funding bill together by this Friday - or May 5, the possible new extended deadline - they're facing a shutdown, potentially delaying key services and costing the government lots of money.

What a government "shutdown" looks like

So if Congress can't get it together to pass some kind of appropriations bill, then what happens? The government shuts down, and lots of "nonessential" government activities suddenly cease.

It's not unusual for Congress to go to the brink of shutdown; it happened as recently as this past December, when Democrats threatened a shutdown if Republicans didn't pass the Miners Protection Act, which would have guarded former miners' health care and benefits. But it's rare they actually don't make the deadline.

The government has officially shut down 18 times since the modern process that Congress uses to pass budget and spending bills took effect in 1976. The first six of those didn't actually affect the functioning of government at all. It wasn't until a set of opinions issued by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in 1980 and '81 that the government started treating "spending gaps" - periods when Congress has failed to allocate funds for the ongoing functions of government - as necessitating the full or partial shutdown of government agencies.

But from the Reagan years onward, any period in which Congress failed to pass funding measures has meant that major chunks of the government stop operating. Which parts depends from shutdown to shutdown, but it generally excludes essential services without which the economy would grind to a halt and people would die.

During shutdowns, federal employees are divided into "essential" and "nonessential" groups (the name was changed to "excepted" and "non-excepted" in 1995 to avoid hurting people's feelings). Nonessential personnel receive furloughs: They're off work until the shutdown is resolved and stop receiving paychecks. In the October 2013 shutdown, about 850,000 federal workers received furloughs, or about 40 percent of all federal nonmilitary employees. After shutdowns, furloughed workers almost always receive retroactive payments covering their salaries during the shutdown. Essential workers also see their pay withheld - but they have to work anyway.

The military, air traffic control, federal prisons, and Social Security and other benefit payments generally keep functioning as normal during shutdowns. But many other government functions are curtailed. In the 2013 shutdown, the effects of the furloughs and other shutdowns in government activity included:

Tax refunds totaling almost $4 billion were delayed.

The Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program went unfunded.

Federal research activities at the National Institutes of Health (which lost about three-quarters of its employees), the National Science Foundation (which lost 98 percent of its workforce), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (which lost two-thirds) shut down nearly entirely; the CDC scaled back its monitoring of disease outbreaks.

Environmental Protection Agency inspections halted at 1,200 locations.

The Food and Drug Administration delayed approval of drugs and medical devices.

The national parks shut down, resulting in $500 million in lost consumer spending from tourism.

Reviews of veterans' disability applications slowed to a halt, with nearly 20,000 applications per week not being evaluated.

In total, the Office on Management and Budget estimated that the shutdown cut GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2013 by 0.2 to 0.6 points, and resulted in 120,000 fewer jobs.

So while shutdowns don't result in seniors going without their retirement checks, or the military closing up shop, or airplanes crashing into each other in the sky, they do cause massive disruption in the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers and their families, and grind a lot of government agencies to a halt.

What are Congress's options for keeping the government open?

There are some things Congress can do to avoid an embarrassing outcome.

It could 1) pass the appropriations bills, likely in an omnibus, which just crams together 11 appropriations bills into one spending package; 2) pass a "continuing resolution," or CR, which would fund the government at its current levels, basically buying more time to negotiate the actual appropriations bills (this is what Congress did in December 2016, pushing the deadline to April 28); or 3) pass a "CRomnibus," which is combination of the two, extending the deadline on certain more contentious appropriations - like for the Department of Homeland Security - in addition to passing a spending bill on the rest.

There seems to be bipartisan support to pass Frelinghuysen's CR, which also includes funding for former miners' health care and benefits by continuing funding for the Health Benefits for Miners Act.

But even with a one week extension, and Republicans in control of the House, Senate, and White House, passing this spending bill won't be easy for the 115th Congress. Unlike President Trump's Cabinet (and now Supreme Court) nominations, which only needed a simple majority of 51 votes, Republican senators will need 60 votes to end debate on the appropriations bill and get it passed - which means they need to get their party in line plus eight Democrats on their side.

So far, this has looked to mean that Democrats will either get their way on funding or the government will shut down.

The White House is picking a fight more than Congress

Congress is on a tight schedule. It has just a few days with both chambers in session to strike a spending deal - or agree they need more time to strike a deal.

For now, it looks like the government will buy itself some time. And while that's possibly necessary to avoid shutdown, delaying the shutdown deadline makes the Republican Party's already full calendar even fuller, distracting lawmakers from tax reform and health care.

As with all bills, the final say is with President Trump. He has to decide whether or not he will sign anything short of his campaign demands. Members of his administration have indicated the White House doesn't want a shutdown either, but it hasn't stopped them from making a final push.

The White House seems more interested in a fight than congressional Republicans do. Over recess, the administration took a harder line on the shutdown deadline, saying funding for the wall is a "must," and Trump tweeted that Obamacare is in "serious trouble." The president was seemingly hinting at a deal that Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney put on the table: an exchange of $1 for the insurance subsidy payments under Obamacare for every $1 given to the border wall. The offer hasn't swayed Senate Democrats. The White House has asked for supplemental budget to begin construction on the border wall between the US and Mexico. Schumer rejected the deal.

A Democratic aide said Mulvaney told Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that the White House could stop funding Obamacare's subsidies as soon as next month, further escalating tensions over the omnibus bill only days before the April 28 deadline. The White House rolled back its threat within a day.

On Thursday April 27, President Donald Trump aired Congress's negotiations over Twitter, claiming the Democrats are fighting for Obamacare subsidies for Puerto Rico.

The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2017

On the other hand, the White House seems to have softened its demands for the wall. Most recently, flipping his script, Trump said funding for the wall could wait until September.

Democrats have leverage in the shutdown fight

Many of Trump's campaign promises are at stake in this fight - and Democrats have made it clear they don't want to concede on any of them.

If Republicans didn't need Democrats to pass a bill, they would want to hike up defense spending, grant Trump's border wall supplemental budget, defund Planned Parenthood (although Speaker Ryan has said that belongs in the health care debate), and cut off subsidies to insurance companies core to Obamacare's functionality.

But Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer has said none of this is going to happen.

Senate and House Democrats have already warned Republicans that any attempt to pass funding for the border wall or other "poison pills" like defunding Planned Parenthood in the 2017 appropriations bill would be met with unified Democratic resistance - which would result in a shutdown.

This puts Republicans in a difficult spot.

They will either have to make peace with a shutdown or make concessions to Democrats. It looks as though they're leaning toward the latter, which would result in an omnibus bill that's pretty friendly to Democrats.

There are some areas of possible agreement, like increases in defense funding and a watered-down compromise on border security, possibly to fund more technology - an area that has more bipartisan support.

It will be near impossible for Republican leadership to sell these concessions to the entirety of its conference - especially once conservatives realize just how much their party has to concede. The irony there is that the more Republican leadership realizes it will lose conservative votes in its own party, the more it will have to rely on Democrats to avoid a shutdown.

Huffington Post's Matt Fuller put it best: "Conservatives inside and outside Congress may soon rightfully ask: How is this deal any different than a bill Republicans would get if Hillary Clinton were president and Democrats controlled Congress?"

This all comes down to who will put up a fight - likely over funding Obamacare subsidies

According to Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY), border wall funding is a nonissue in negotiations: It's not going to happen. But there are still a number of open items on the table, the biggest of which appears to be funding Obamacare's subsidies.

As it stands now, it will be a difficult ask for Republicans to give in to Democratic demand to fund cost-sharing reductions - which help make copays and deductibles cheaper for people who have insurance through Obamacare - in the appropriations bill.

"It's going to be very, very difficult to get Republicans to vote for billions of dollars to fund failing exchanges," a GOP aide said about the Obamacare subsidies. The aide added that funding Obamacare will likely be more of a sticking point with wider Republican support than funding a border wall. "Not every person campaigned on building a border wall, but every person campaigned on repealing Obamacare."

Some Republican House leaders seem less willing to go to the mat over Obamacare.

"I don't think anybody wants to disrupt the markets more than they already are," Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for health spending, told the New York Times. "It's a very unstable market."

Two days before the April 28 spending deadline, Speaker Ryan said he would not stand for funding Obamacare subsidies in the appropriations bill. But Senate and House Democrats remain adamant that CSR language needs to be included.

It looks like Congress will have an extra week to come to a compromise. If they don't, however, they will have a government shutdown on their watch.

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What a federal government shutdown actually means

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Congress is barreling toward a government shutdown deadline. The House and Senate have until midnight on April 28 to pass a spending bill or the federal government will run out of money and close its doors. Despite controlling every lever of government, Republicans are somehow faced with the possibility that they can't get the votes together to keep the government open.

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The link for question number 5.

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In addition to keeping the government operating through Feb. 8, the bill would extend the popular Children's Health Insurance Program for another six years.

Senate votes to end shutdown.

The Senate voted 81-18 on Monday to end the three-day-old government shutdown, with Democrats joining Republicans to fund the government through February 8 in exchange for a promise from Republican leaders to address the fate of young, undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

"In a few hours, the government will reopen," said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. "We have a lot to do."

The House must still vote on the measure later Monday afternoon or evening, but final passage is a formality. The bill also funds the popular Children's Health Insurance Program for six years and delays or suspends a handful of tax increases that were to help pay for insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

After a weekend of partisan finger-pointing - in which Democrats branded the shutdown the "Trump Shutdown," after President Trump, and Republicans branded it the "Schumer shutdown" - Monday's vote offered Republicans and Democrats a way out of an ugly impasse that threatened to cause political harm to both parties.

Mr. Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor, announced that he and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, had "come to an arrangement" to adopt the three-week spending measure while continuing to negotiate a "global agreement" that would include the fate of the dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.

Monday's vote came after a frantic weekend of work by a bipartisan group of more than 20 senators, who on Sunday night were discussing a plan in which the government would stay open through early February, coupled with a promise from Mr. McConnell to allow a vote on a measure to protect the Dreamers from deportation.

Mr. McConnell pledged Monday morning that he would create a "level playing field" on immigration next month if the issue had not been resolved by then. But his promise was not enough for many Democrats, and on Monday morning, moderate Senate Democrats were still pressing for more in exchange for their votes to end the shutdown.

By noon, just before the first vote to end debate on the spending bill, the moderate Democrats were predicting passage.

"We're going to vote to reopen the government," Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat whose state is home to thousands of federal workers, told reporters. Mr. Warner said there was now a "path clear on how we're going to get a full-year budget and we got a path clear on how we're going to start an immigration debate."

Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he was a "strong" yes.

"I said before trust but verify," he said of Mr. McConnell. "He made this commitment publicly in the Senate floor. He was much more specific than he was last night. And frankly I think this is an important opportunity for him to demonstrate that he will carry through."
- Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Trump: the Democrats "have come to their senses."

"I am pleased that Democrats in Congress have come to their senses and are now willing to fund our great military, border patrol, first responders, and insurance for vulnerable children. As I have always said, once the Government is funded, my Administration will work toward solving the problem of very unfair illegal immigration. We will make a long-term deal on immigration if, and only if, it is good for our country." - Statement released by the White House

White House insists Trump was part of the deal-making.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, insisted that the deal that the Senatevoted on was not "drastically different" than what was discussed on Friday between the president and Mr. Schumer.

Despite what was characterized by both parties as Mr. Trump's invisibility this weekend, Ms. Sanders still insisted that he was responsible for making a deal happen.

"What the president did clearly worked," she said, calling the numbers more in Mr. Trump's favor "than in Senator Schumer's favor."

"The president stayed firm, Republicans stayed firm and Democrats Ithink realized that they had to move past that piece of legislation" in order to discuss immigration going forward, Ms. Sanders said.

But she declined to clarify precisely what the parameters of an immigration deal would look like. She dodged several questions about how many of the so-called dreamers might be eligible for what she called a "permanent solution" to their legal status, or how it might be put into effect, or when deportations of DACA recipients might begin.

"They say they want to negotiate so much so that they were willing to shut down the government," Ms. Sanders said of Democrats in response to a specific question about when deportations would start.

She dodged a question about whether Mr. Trump had a role in dictating a web ad his campaign released over the weekend that said Democrats would be "complicit" in murders committed by undocumented immigrants. But she anticipated a full restoration of federal services by Tuesday morning.

White House official Marc Short credited the president with impacting the tide turning by calling into the House Freedom Caucus meeting on Thursday. He then - mostly - held to a script that his aides prescribed that blamed Democrats. The White House consistently said they believed Democrats in red states would be forced to come around.

But aides at the White House, many of whom had never lived through a shut down before, were unsure how to spend their time. A group of press aides considered sending volunteers to the Mall to clean up after the women's rally on Saturday to highlight that the govenrment was shut, but they scuttled the plan when they found out that the Washington D.C. police were already doing it.

"Put this mess behind us."

Mr. McConnell said on Monday morning that the Senate would move ahead with a scheduled procedural vote at noon on a proposal to fund the government through Feb. 8, and he urged his colleagues to put an end to the shutdown.

"Every day we spend arguing about keeping the lights on is another day we cannot spend negotiating DACA or defense spending or any of our other shared priorities," Mr. McConnell said, referring to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program put in place by the Obama administration that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Mr. McConnell reiterated a pledge he offered on Sunday night that he intended for the Senate to take up immigration legislation in February if the issue has not been resolved by then. A major question as senators seek to end the shutdown is what kind of commitment Mr. McConnell is willing to make regarding the consideration of legislation for the young immigrants, a central issue in the current impasse.

On Monday, Mr. McConnell pledged that the Senate's immigration debate would have "a level playing field at the outset and an amendment process that is fair to all sides."

"The very first step is ending the government shutdown," he said.
- Thomas Kaplan
Democrats wanted more than McConnell's word.

Moderate Senate Democrats Monday morning had sought a firmer commitment from Mr. McConnell that the Senate would move to address the fate of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, in the coming weeks.

The Democrats were part of a bipartisan group of more than 20 senators working throughout the weekend to forge a compromise to reopen the government. Mr. McConnell signaled Sunday night that he was listening to their demands, saying from the Senate floor that he intended to move ahead with immigration legislation in February if the issue had not been resolved by then.

But on Monday, Democrats wanted more in exchange for the votes to end the shutdown.

"Well I think the first thing he needs to do is strengthen his statement from last night," said Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who votes with the Democrats. " 'I intend.' I would much rather he say, 'I commit' or 'I will move.'"

As senators from the group shuffled in and out of leadership offices, Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona and another member of the group, expressed optimism that such a public statement by Mr. McConnell would be enough to win over enough Democrats to vote to end the shutdown. Some Democrats called on Mr. McConnell to delay a procedural vote schedule for noon.

The crux issue, it seemed, was whether the majority leader could be trusted to keep his word. Democrats have not forgiven Mr. McConnell for blocking the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland for almost a year pending the election of a Republican to the White House. And Mr. McConnell's promises to Republican Senators Flake and Susan Collins of Maine for votes on health care and immigration in exchange for their support of the tax cut have yet to materialize.

How much of the issue is that mistrust?

"Uh, most of it," said Senator Joseph Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.
- Nicholas Fandos
Liberal activists weren't ready to relent.

A broad array of liberal advocacy groups - including unions and immigrants' rights activists - stepped up pressure on Democrats not to accede on Monday to any deal that does not include protections for the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

The advocates made clear that they do not trust Mr. McConnell.

"To anyone considering such a move, let me clear, promises won't protect anyone from deportation, because delay means deportation for us," said Greisa Martinez Rosas, advocacy director for America's Voice, an immigrant rights group.

Moderate Senate Democrats on Monday were seeking a firmer commitment from Mr. McConnell. But the groups remained skeptical. Vanita Gutpta, the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, harked back to Democrats' vote on Friday to block a spending bill that would have kept the government open, without protecting the Dreamers.

"We've made it clear that the broad progressive movement is unified in saying the Democrats stood strong on Friday, they absolutely need to continue to do so," Ms. Gupta said. She added, "Simply put a dream deferred right now is a dream denied for hundreds of thousands in our country."

The Sierra Club's executive director, Michael Brune, was blunt: "Everyone in the Senate should have learned the lesson Senators Flake and Collins learned: you can't trust Mitch McConnell. His promises are empty from the start."
- Sheryl Gay Stolberg
The White House comment line had an attitude.

On Monday morning, a telephone call to the White House comment line reminded callers that the federal government was shutdown and offered the Trump administration's explanation for why: "Unfortunately, we cannot answer your call today because congressional Democrats are holding government funding for our troops and other national security priorities hostage to an unrelated immigration debate," a recording said. "Due to this obstruction the government is shut down."

Setting aside the partisan nature of the call, its message was only half true, if that. Most of the government is functioning, at least for now. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission say they have enough money in the pipeline to operate normally. The White House ordered the National Parks to stay open, depriving the media of the most obvious signs of dysfunction.

Even Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia's intervention in the 2016 election and any possible collusion with the Trump campaign, is still in action. He has declared his investigators "essential employees."

But was the recording legal? Norm Eisen, who served as the top ethics lawyer during Barack Obama's first term in the White House and is now on the board of the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the message probably did not violate the Hatch Act, the statute that bars most executive branch employees from engaging in political activity. It certainly does run contrary to its policy, and therefore "would have been inconceivable in any other administration, of either party."

"This telephone message falls in the very thin, gray area where this White House lives, which is quite a bit north of definitely wrong, but just south, or on the borderline, of illegal," Mr. Eisen said.

He said it violated the longstanding norm observed by presidents in both parties that the White House staff, particularly nonpartisan career employees such as the person likely to have recorded the message, is there to serve all Americans, not just those who voted for him.

But the recording would be unlikely to generate a formal complaint, Mr. Eisen said, because no specific political candidate was mentioned. The White House changed the message as the Senate headed toward a deal.
- Eileen Sullivan and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
White House shows signs it's on the offense.

After a weekend of relative silence from the White House, Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, appeared on CNN to defend President Trump, who had been publicly criticized as disengaged on the negotiations and unduly influenced by his senior advisers.

"We're happy with how the president engaged," Mr. Shah said, before shifting blame to the Democrats. "It was them that were holding back funding for our military, our troops, our border patrol agents and our first responders."

Mr. Shah also defended a president who has been publicly accused by lawmakers in his own party of deferring to Stephen Miller, the adviser who is ideologically behind much of the White House's restrictive immigration agenda.

"Those charges are frankly ridiculous, and they're a little insulting," Mr. Shah said. "The views that the president is endorsing are his and his alone."

Mr. Trump, a president prone to hit back against his critics in real time, remained relatively restrained on Monday, except to accuse Democrats of being cowed by activists who want a fast decision on the fate of the Dreamers.

Democrats have shut down our government in the interests of their far left base. They don't want to do it but are powerless!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Jan. 22, 2018

Correction: January 22, 2018

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Stopgap Bill to End Government Shutdown Passes Congress

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In addition to keeping the government operating through Feb. 8, the bill would extend the popular Children's Health Insurance Program for another six years. Senate votes to end shutdown. The Senate voted 81-18 on Monday to end the three-day-old government shutdown, with Democrats joining Republicans to fund the government through February 8 in exchange for a promise from Republican leaders to address the fate of young, undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

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The link for question number 6.

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As President Donald Trump enters his second year in the White House, he's made clear his priorities for the new year, which Congress will have to decide on.

Here are some important dates for 2018:

Government shutdown? -- January 19

The Senate approved a short-term spending measure in late December to keep the government open through January 19.

Along with funding the government for nearly a month, the bill included funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program through March and extended a government surveillance program for three weeks.

Negotiators have worked to strike a deal that would raise budget caps on defense and domestic programs and allow a bill to pass that would fund the government through September, the end of the fiscal year. If they can't reach a deal on caps, government funding might have to limp forward on a series of stopgap measures to prevent a shutdown.

The Section 702 program -- January 19

The Section 702 program, first amended to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 and reauthorized in 2012, allows intelligence agencies to legally monitor the emails and phone calls of foreign nationals outside of the US. It's set to expire soon.

Through the continuing resolution passed by Congress in December,the program is funded until January 19.

A handful of bills renewing the program have been proposed in the House and Senate, running the spectrum from a clean and permanent reauthorization to a four-year extension with significant reform.

Trump's State of the Union -- January 30

Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address on January 30, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced in November.

"I'm formally inviting President Trump to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, January 30, to report on the state of the union," Ryan said. "We look forward to him accepting our invitation."

The address will be Trump's first speech to a full Congress since his joint address last year, a month after he was inaugurated. It's typically when a President delivers a speech on the state of current affairs in the nation, as well as goals for the new year.

The former real estate developer plans to push Congress to back one of his top campaign pledges: spending billions to improve bridges, roads and other infrastructure projects across the country.

McConnell's deadline for immigration -- January 31

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he will have the Senate vote on an immigration plan, but only if lawmakers can reach a bipartisan deal by the end of this month.

"There are bipartisan discussions in the Senate, involving the administration, about improving border security, interior enforcement and reforming important parts of our broken immigration system, including addressing the unlawfully established Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program," McConnell said in a statement.

"If negotiators reach an agreement on these matters by the end of January, I will bring it to the Senate floor for a free-standing vote," he said.

McConnell's statement came after Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona had said he received a commitment for a vote on immigration.

Flake had been hesitant over the tax package, but in negotiations he said one of his requirements had been a commitment to progress on a plan to provide a permanent legislative version of DACA, which Trump is ending.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program -- March 5

DACA was an executive action taken by President Barack Obama that allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the US under the age of 16 to apply for protection from deportation. After a background check, those individuals were able to get renewable two-year permits to work and study in the US as well.

Since it went into effect in 2012, roughly 800,000 people have been protected by the program, and roughly 700,000 had active DACA protections in September, when the Trump administration announced DACA's end.

To be eligible, applicants had to have arrived in the US before age 16 and have lived there since June 15, 2007. They could not have been older than 30 when the Department of Homeland Security enacted the policy in 2012.

DHS set a date of March 5 for permits to begin expiring. All current permits will be honored until their individual two-year expiration dates.

To delay the effect of the termination, the administration offered a one-month window for all DACA holders whose permits expired before March 5 to apply for a renewal, though more than 20,000 of those eligible either didn't apply or had their applications rejected.

CHIP funding patch -- end of March

Congress is injecting nearly $3 billion into the Children's Health Insurance Program to keep it funded through March. The money is included in the short-term government spending bill.

Though CHIP is popular on both sides of the political aisle, its funding ended September 30, the end of the fiscal year, and Congress has failed to reauthorize a long-term appropriation for it. States had started warning that children would lose their coverage if lawmakers didn't act fast.

CHIP covers about 9 million children whose parents usually earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private health coverage -- typically no more than $62,000 for a family of four. The 20-year-old program cost about $15.6 billion in fiscal 2016, funded almost entirely by the federal government.

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important dates and deadlines for congress in 2018 - cnnpolitics

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Important dates and deadlines for Congress in 2018

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As President Donald Trump enters his second year in the White House, he's made clear his priorities for the new year, which Congress will have to decide on. Here are some important dates for 2018: Government shutdown? -- January 19 The Senate approved a short-term spending measure in late December to keep the government open through January 19.