Government shutdown, internal US division and deep conflict?

Sad marks of 1 year in power

At midnight on January 20, the United States celebrated President Donald Trump's first year in office by temporarily shutting down the federal government. The story began when, despite being passed by the House of Representatives, the temporary spending bill failed to pass the Senate last weekend. Despite President Trump's many previous efforts to salvage the bill and avoid a government shutdown, lawmakers decided to make it difficult for Donald Trump's second year in office.

US President Donald Trump is having a headache over the immigration issue - one of the reasons leading to the conflict between the Democrats and Republicans as well as the federal government shutdown. Source: Los Angeles Times.

This worst-case scenario in American politics has raised a series of questions in public opinion. First of all, everyone understands that the consequence of a government shutdown is that hundreds of thousands of federal employees will have to temporarily quit their jobs. Meanwhile, more than 1.3 million military personnel and 95,000 Justice Department employees will still have to work and perform their duties but without pay.

Not only that, if the government shut down for 1 week, the US economy would lose about 6.5 billion USD. According to Goldman Sachs' forecast, the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the first quarter of 2018 will decrease by 0.2%. According to Defense Secretary James Mattis, the government shutdown will also seriously affect US military operations, including combat training, maintenance, maintenance of weapons, equipment and intelligence work...

Most importantly, this incident once again exposed the internal conflicts in American politics. First of all, between President Trump and the Democrats, which have existed for a long time. This is evident in the fact that the temporary budget bill does not include provisions to protect immigrants - an issue that the Democrats have always considered a top priority. More specifically, the Democrats and Republicans have disagreed on immigration policy through the "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" program - abbreviated as DACA.

While the Democrats are determined to protect the young generation of immigrants, President Trump and the Republicans tend to cancel this program. This is easily seen through a series of Donald Trump's tough policies towards immigrants since taking office. Despite the fact that right before the vote, the leader of the Democratic Party in the US Senate, Charles Schumer, had a meeting with President Trump, the two sides still could not reach a common voice. According to Mr. Charles, it was Mr. Trump's rigidity that put the government in such a difficult situation. In response, Republican congressmen also "counterattacked" and said that the Democrats actually just wanted to find a boost for the immigration issue regardless of the possible consequences. Not only conflicting on the immigration issue, the Democrats and Republicans also argued about a series of issues such as military - defense spending or domestic spending...

Internally divided Republic

It is worth mentioning that there is not simply a conflict between the Democrats and Republicans, even within the Republican Party of President Donald Trump since he took office, there has always been disagreement and division. Recently, Donald Trump's proposal to "save" the government by wanting to change the voting law in the Senate was immediately rejected by the leading Republican senator, Mitch McConnell.

President Donald Trump and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer during a meeting at the White House. Source: AP.

It should be noted that the Republican Party currently dominates the Senate with 51 out of 100 senators. However, according to the rules, certain bills can only be passed if they receive at least 60% of the votes in the Senate. President Trump's proposed change aims to make all bills easier to pass when both houses of Congress are still in Republican hands. However, despite affirming that he still supports Mr. Trump on the temporary budget bill, Mitch McConnell still decided to say "No" to the President's proposed change to the voting rules.

The public was not too surprised by this reaction of Mr. Mitch McConnell. Because the Republican Party, although being the President's party, since the election, many congressmen of this party have not been "satisfied" with the style and policies of Mr. Donald Trump. Even Congressman Mitch Connell in a statement had to implicitly imply that he always expected a specific decision from the President, but he did not know clearly what solution the President would decide!

In fact, the government shutdown has become a haunting feature of budget negotiations in the US Congress for many years. And this is the 13th time the US government has been forced to shut down. Looking back at history, the last time the US government had to temporarily shut down for 16 days was in 2013 under President Barack Obama. However, it can be said that this scenario is becoming more serious and complicated under President Donald Trump.

With what is happening, it can be said that after 1 year in power, the "achievements" that Mr. Trump has "reaped" are all dark. That is, the limited economic growth, a series of internal conflicts that are deepened by controversial policies, the power struggle between the two factions is becoming more complicated... All are signaling that the second year in power of the US leader is full of difficulties and challenges./.