Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Donald Trump says the US government 'needs a good shutdown'

The President will announce his full proposed budget for next financial year later this month

Mythili Sampathkumar
New York
Tuesday 02 May 2017 14:24 BST
Comments
Donald Trump said the US government needs a 'good shutdown'
Donald Trump said the US government needs a 'good shutdown' (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty)

Donald Trump tweeted that the country needs a "good shutdown" of the US government.

Congress is set to vote this week on a spending bill that would keep the government funded until September 2017.

They will vote again on the next financial year's proposed budget later this year.

Democrats managed to save several programmes for this financial year including arts funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) as well as funding for Amtrak rail service and kept cuts to environment protection programmes to a minimum.

These are all items that Mr Trump slashed in his "skinny budget" for the next financial year he introduced early in his term. He is set to announce his full proposed federal budget the week of 22 May.

The last time the federal government shutdown was in October 2013 during former President Barack Obama’s second term. Republicans orchestrated the 17-day shutdown in an effort to repeal Obamacare, which was ultimately unsuccessful in that goal.

That shutdown cost the government $24bn (£18.6bn) in economic output according to the Washington Post. The ratings agencies Standard and Poor's and Moody's Analytics calculated their estimates using past economic behaviour as well as government employee and contractor salaries that were not paid.

The 2013 shutdown also resulted in lost revenue for the National Parks Service to the tune of $450,000 (£348,000) a day and $152m (£118m) a day loss for the travel industry due to lack of federal business travel and national parks visitors.

Mr Trump referred to the 2018 mid-term elections as a way to gain more Republicans in Congress, however the party has the majority in both houses of Congress already.

He suffered a blow when trying to repeal and replace Obamacare, facing opposition from a group of dissenting Republicans in the Freedom Caucus within the House.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in