--:-- [Sound of a podcast intro]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- [Sound of a guest speaking]
--:-- Li Zhou: I was biking past the Washington Monument yesterday and noticed that the trash cans all around it were overflowing. There was trash blowing all over the National Mall. And it was just a subtle little reminder that it's a whole new year, but the government is still stuck in late 2018.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's Li Zhou from Vox, covering the shutdown for us. Day 12 of the shutdown today, and about 25% of the government has currently been affected because the other 75% was funded earlier last year.
--:-- Li Zhou: And that means that departments, including Homeland Security, Treasury, State, Interior, have yet to be funded. And one of the biggest impacts of this is that about 800,000 federal employees are currently affected and working without pay or are furloughed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So about 380,000 are furloughed, which means they've been told to just stay home, not come to work. And then the other 420,000 are working, but they're not getting immediate pay.
--:-- Li Zhou: And so which agencies are the most affected by that? I think some of the most visible ones that people might observe are places like the national parks, where they've stayed open over the holidays, but they've had limited staffing, limited access to services.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And conservationists are worried that natural resources are getting hurt by kind of the lack of park rangers around to make sure things are going smoothly.
--:-- Li Zhou: Another place people might see it is the IRS, which I think most directly affects people's taxes. And filing season is about to start. And it's the first filing season where they're going to be implementing the new Republican tax plan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they were already worried about delays. And I think now, because so many people at that agency are furloughed, you could see that delayed even further.
--:-- Li Zhou: But other places, including like FDA, EPA, the judiciary, all expected to see some sort of impact due to limited staffing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this whole thing, of course, is happening because of President Trump's desire to see more security at the border, a wall, slats, whatever it might be.
--:-- Li Zhou: Is stuff like border security, Border Patrol, are they still being fully funded?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Homeland Security is probably the most contentious department that has yet to be funded. But about 88 percent of DHS is still working and they're doing it without pay.
--:-- Li Zhou: So you're looking at people like Border Patrol as well as the U.S. Coast Guard still working.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that is kind of an ironic political twist in all of this in that as Trump demands more border security, you're seeing people who are in charge of helping provide that working without pay over the holidays.
--:-- Li Zhou: A majority of the country's border security is working currently for free.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With the hopes that once this whole thing's resolved, they'll get back pay, I guess.
--:-- Li Zhou: Yeah, right. Congress in the past has usually approved back pay for both workers who are furloughed as well as workers who are kind of on the job but not getting their paychecks immediately.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How about like Congress senators? They're still getting paid?
--:-- Li Zhou: Yep. They're still getting paid. Their pay actually comes from – it's directly written into the Constitution. So it's not affected by this annual appropriations process.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nice. Yep. So I guess like who are the federal employees that aren't getting paid?
--:-- Li Zhou: It just depends on where you are and in which department and at what level or something like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it's folks working at all of these agencies.
--:-- Li Zhou: And I think the people that you see getting probably most directly affected by this are people who are federal contractors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that includes everyone from security guards to cafeteria workers to consultants because they are unlikely to get back pay after all of this is over.
--:-- Li Zhou: So if you're employed directly by the federal government, you're going to get pay because kind of the government has processes in place for that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But contractors work for a third-party company. So if those companies aren't getting paid for their services during this time, those contractors just kind of have a huge hole in their paychecks.
--:-- Li Zhou: That's never going to get made up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess an interesting thing about the government being shut down is that you could very well go about your life without really noticing it.
--:-- Li Zhou: Right If you're not at a national park or not at the border
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How is this affecting President Trump approval ratings? Are people noticing this and frustrated about this? Or is it sort of business as usual?
--:-- Li Zhou: His approval ratings have plummeted in response to the shutdown.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, a recent poll has them under 40 percent, which is about the same as they were during the Charlottesville rally when he refused to denounce white supremacists.
--:-- Li Zhou: So they're very low.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's definitely getting blamed for the shutdown.
--:-- Li Zhou: And that makes sense, given the fact that he said he's willing to own the shutdown and that he's proud to own the shutdown.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But has since been blaming Democrats.
--:-- Li Zhou: Right. And I think when you look at that poll, the data kind of reflects that in that about, I think it's over 80 percent of Republicans actually support what he's doing and think he shouldn't compromise and he should keep on fighting for the wall as he's promised to do this whole time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Democrats, of course, take control of the House on Thursday, tomorrow.
--:-- Li Zhou: Do they have a plan to try and fund the government?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They do. They have two measures that they've proposed.
--:-- Li Zhou: One of those is going to cover six bills that fund parts of the government that have not been super controversial to fund, including places like Treasury and the State Department.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then another short-term bill would cover the Department of Homeland Security through February 8th.
--:-- Li Zhou: And that just means that it would fund homeland security at its current levels, which include $1.3 billion for border security, and that this fight would happen pretty much all over again in about a month.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the president would still have to sign off on that bill?
--:-- Li Zhou: Right. Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's a big question that's up in the air.
--:-- Li Zhou: The Senate has actually passed this short-term funding bill before they left in December.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I think Democratic leaders are saying that would be weird if Senate Republicans don't approve it again this time around.
--:-- Li Zhou: But of course, a lot has also changed in the interim.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the president is meeting with leaders of both parties today at the White House.
--:-- Li Zhou: Is it the Democratic-slash-Republican plan that they're going to talk about, or is it some other priorities?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think they're going to talk about it.
--:-- Li Zhou: They're supposed to get a briefing on border security that's, I'm sure, going to touch on the wall, probably the importance of having a wall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's a little unclear what's going to come out of the meeting.
--:-- Li Zhou: I think there are a couple possible outcomes, one of which is that they miraculously decide to come together on a deal because both sides are getting pressure and it's important to keep the government open.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A short-term deal, not the long-term solution?
--:-- Li Zhou: Right. Unless something insane happens, there's probably not going to be a long-term resolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then I think the second is probably us seeing the same thing that happened before the holidays with the Chuck and Nancy meeting where everything just kind of blew up completely.
--:-- Li Zhou: Yeah, that was rough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president's framing this as, you know, I care about border security. I care about a wall. The Democrats don't. The Democrats want open borders.
--:-- Li Zhou: What have the Democrats done since President Trump took office to the end of border security?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is it true that they haven't really funded anything?
--:-- Li Zhou: I mean, like, have they signed on for anything?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, they definitely have.
--:-- Li Zhou: And I think the actual previous DHS appropriations bill includes money for border security, which covers fencing, technology, kind of an array of things that they are lumping together in that category.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they've definitely signed on bipartisan agreements.
--:-- Li Zhou: It's not true that they aren't for border security at all. It's just that right now I think they are staying as far as way as possible from funding anything that can be categorized as a wall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And is there a sense that Republicans aren't too hot on the idea either?
--:-- Li Zhou: I think what you're seeing is a lot of pressure from Trump and Republicans responding to that pressure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the indication that Senate Republicans were willing to approve something that did not include any wall money before the break is a pretty good indication that Republicans, this is not one of their like must haves.
--:-- Li Zhou: But I think there's a portion of the base, including members of the Freedom Caucus and the House, who've really urged Trump to kind of dig in his heels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's why you're seeing this fight right now.
--:-- [Sound of a commercial break]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Up next, the wall as a rhetorical symbol, the wall as border security, the wall as a really bad way to spend billions.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: The thing is, is that there are walls on the border already. A lot of them, actually.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matthew Yglesias is a senior correspondent at Vox. Matthew, welcome back to the show.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, Matthew, you're saying that the wall is a bad idea.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: The wall is a bad idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is that?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: The thing is, is that there are walls on the border already. A lot of them, actually.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you go to San Diego, if you go to El Paso, if you go to McAllen, if you go to the major border communities, there's walls around it.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: So the places where it would be really easy to sneak across the border without a wall have mostly been walled.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's unwalled is open spaces, generally far from settlements, relatively easy to police, relatively difficult to construct a wall there.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Meanwhile, the whole subject of the immigration debate has shifted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At this point, the population of undocumented Mexican-born people has been falling.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: The undocumented population as a whole is falling.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what we have now when we debate about immigration, we are really talking about asylum seekers who are trying to present themselves to Border Patrol.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: They want to get in touch with someone at the border. They're making these asylum claims and there is a difficult debate about what we should do with them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was the caravan, these child detentions, family separations.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: And the wall has nothing to do with that debate, which is at the center of gravity here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The wall was this sort of potent piece of rhetorical symbolism, but it has very little to do with actual immigration to the United States.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: So restrictionists don't want it badly enough to give Democrats anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that's left Trump trying to use the shutdown to coerce them.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: But nobody's ever succeeded in getting what they want through this method.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what does that mean for negotiations? What does that mean for the budget?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: I mean it means that negotiations keep focusing on different ways to try to fudge this, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was this earlier iteration where Democrats wanted action on DACA.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so because Democrats really wanted DACA they then tried to say OK we will give you Trump something that you want like a wall.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Yeah, right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that legislation in a healthy kind of dynamic
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Except what happened was was John Kelly and Freedom Caucus members started saying no no no that a terrible deal
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We won't take that deal, which made sense from their perspective.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: It made sense for Democrats to offer it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it would have made sense for Trump. He could have said, look, like these dreamers, like they're not the bad guys in this immigration situation.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: So we're going to help them out. We're going to build a great big beautiful wall. It's going to be amazing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But having rejected that, we're now left with sort of nothing, right?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Where Trump is saying, well, Democrats, you have to swallow this wall and in exchange, you get nothing at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Democrats obviously aren't going to do that.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: They just won an election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If he really wants the wall, he has to give Democrats something.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: But Republicans don't want him to give Democrats anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're stuck.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: We're stuck.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're stuck.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: He obviously prides himself on fulfilling his campaign promises.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there a sense that if he didn't fulfill this one, his base would abandon him?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: That doesn't seem likely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, that's what he's talked himself into.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: But it's a very strange thing because Trump at times really doubles down on campaign promises, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like promises made, promises kept.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: It's like at the backdrop of his rallies. Promises made and promises kept.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Promises made, promises kept.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: President Trump made promises, but he's kept many more promises.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, far more than I may think of it.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: It's true.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the same time, you know, he broke his campaign promises about Medicaid.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: He broke his campaign promises about clean air and clean water.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he breaks promises all the time.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: You could always say as the president, what you meant by wall was we were going to make the border more secure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this deal, which includes whatever it is, right?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Truck inspections or extra asylum claim people or judges or, you know, like a little drone that flies around somewhere.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: That helps secure the border. That's what I meant by the wall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And like, are people really going to abandon Trump over that?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Like, I'm a little bit skeptical.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in the meantime, government shutdowns are beginning to feel normal.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: It's not a great sign, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, we didn't used to have shutdowns at all.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: The old legal interpretation was that the government stayed open unless there was some affirmative action to close it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shutdown seemed to be becoming more common just because it's been normalized in Congress.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Has this tool already been overused?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is it already something that's sort of lost its potency, shutting down the government?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: It's hard to say.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I mean, Democrats tried it and it had very little kind of impact for them.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: And it didn't last very long.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In part because they knew it wasn't really going to work.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: In their minds, conservatives think, well, we don't even like government bureaucrats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So having them not working, like that's not so bad.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Like maybe it's actually really good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nobody's been bothered yet exactly.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: But, you know, people are going to start wanting to file and get their tax refunds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if they can't do that, like that's going to impact a lot of people and they're going to be pretty mad.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: And that's where, I don't know, you might start to see the repercussions of this?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People love a good principled stand and they really love a sort of symbolic battle about walls, pro-wall, anti-wall, things like that.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: But then sometimes politics touch your life personally, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like you wanted to get some money back from the government, but now you can't, right?
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: Or you wanted to get clearance to do something new with your company and now you can't.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or you wanted to take your family on vacation to a national park and now you can't.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: That's when things change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matthew Yglesias is a senior correspondent at Vox.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is season two of Today Explained.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: We got your back like chiroprac.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Matthew Yglesias: To be continued...
