US Government shutdown would HALT military operations official warns as deadline looms

The US Government has until midnight on Friday to reach a deal on federal spending. If no deal is made it will be forced to go into shutdown until an agreement is made.

A procedural vote on budget bill set for 3am GMT (10 pm local Washington DC time) according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Jim Mattis said: ”Our maintenance activities will pretty much shut down.

“Over 50 percent, altogether of my civilian workforce will be furloughed.

“We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money, those obviously would stop.”

However, the Defence Department said a shutdown would not impact the US military’s war in Afghanistan or its operations against Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria.

Mr Mattis is set to leave the US this weekend for a trip to Indonesia and Vietnam.

The Pentagon said in a statement that Mr Mattis’ trip to Asia would go ahead even in the case of a Government shutdown because it was necessary for national security and foreign relations.

The US Congress has been racing against the clock to avoid a federal government shutdown before a midnight deadline on Friday after a meeting between Donald Trump and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer failed to produce a deal.

Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, however: “Excellent preliminary meeting in Oval with Chuck Schumer – working on solutions for Security and our great Military together with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.

“Making progress – four week extension would be best!”

Trump invited Mr Schemer to the White House for talks, but the Democrat did not have much to say to reporters upon his return to Capitol Hill.

He said: “We had a long and detailed meeting; we discussed all of the major and outstanding issues.

“We made some progress, but we still have a good number of disagreements.”

With the fate of the spending bill in the balance, federal agencies have been told to prepare for partial government shutdowns throughout America today.

If money does run out, many federal agencies would be shut down and workers sent home.

The Secretary of Defence warned that the biggest impact would be psychological.

He said: “It’s got a huge moral impact.

“How long can you keep good people around when something like this happens is always a question that has to hover in the back of my mind.

During his comments in which he outlined the Pentagon’s new National Defence Strategy, Mr Mattis discussed the damaging impact of federal spending caps.

He said: “As hard as the last 16 years of war have been, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the US military than the Combined impact of the Budget Control Act’s defence spending caps, and 9 of the last 10 years operating under Continuing Resolutions, wasting copious amounts of precious taxpayer dollars.”

“As I stand here this morning, watching the news off the Hill, we’re on the verge of a government shutdown or, at best, yet another debilitating continuing resolution.

“We need Congress back in the driver’s seat of budget decisions, not in the spectator’s seat of the Budget Control Act’s indiscriminate and automatic cuts.”

More than 800,000 federal employees were furloughed during the last US government shutdown which lasted more than two weeks in 2013.

During the 2013 shutdown, the Internal Revenue Service furloughed 90 per cent of workers, according to the liberal Center for American Progress.

Since 1976 the US Government has shutdown 18 times.