Senate stirs with votes on bills to end US shutdown
President Trump, after being disinvited by House speaker Nancy Pelosi, now says he will only deliver state of union address when shutdown is over
Washington — The Republican-led US Senate planned votes for Thursday on competing proposals, one broadly backed by Democrats and the other by Republicans, to end the partial government shutdown, both of which seemed unlikely to resolve the month-long impasse. Republican President Donald Trump in December triggered the shutdown, now in its 34th day, by demanding $5.7bn for a US-Mexico border wall, opposed by Democrats, as part of any legislation to fund about a quarter of the government. The longest such shutdown in US history has left 800,000 federal workers and private contractors without pay and struggling to make ends meet, with the effects on government services and the economy reverberating nationwide. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell plans a vote on a Democratic proposal to fund the government for three weeks but does not include the wall funding that Trump wants. Its prospects looked dim in the Republican-controlled chamber, although at least one conservative senator re...
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