Lawmakers punt shutdown to new Congress

Congress is effectively kicking the partial government shutdown into 2019.

Both chambers met briefly on Monday but did not take action to fully reopen the government.

The Senate, with only Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) present, met on Monday for roughly a minute without taking up legislation to fund roughly 25 percent of the government. The House held a similar session.

Both chambers will meet again on Wednesday, when they are expected to formally adjourn the 115th Congress.

The decision to kick the funding fight until later in the week will push the partial shutdown closer to its two-week mark after Congress missed the Dec. 21 deadline to fund the rest of the government.{mosads}

The White House and lawmakers are at a stalemate over funding for President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, warned on Sunday that the partial shutdown “could last a long, long time” and that negotiations are “at an impasse at the moment.”

“At the end of the day, all of this will end. We don’t know when, in negotiations. It’s not a question of who wins or loses. Nobody’s going to win this kind of game. Nobody wins in a shutdown. We all lose and we kind of look silly,” Shelby told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Trump has demanded $5 billion for the wall. House Republicans included the amount in a short-term stopgap bill that would have funded roughly a quarter of the government through Feb. 8.