US President Donald Trump and lawmakers in Congress are under mounting pressure to end a five-week government shutdown that is impacting millions of Americans (MANDEL NGAN)

Washington (AFP) – US lawmakers and the White House faced intensifying pressure Friday to resolve a five-week impasse and reopen government, as the political stalemate has begun to affect the nation’s busy airports.

After two competing bills to end the partial shutdown failed in the Senate, its members were urgently scrambling for a fix — even a temporary one — that would get hundreds of thousands of federal employees back on the job.

Negotiations that jump-started late Thursday are focused on a bipartisan proposal for a three-week stopgap funding measure that would reopen lapsed agencies and allow time for haggling over what has become the main budget impasse: President Donald Trump’s insistence on a US-Mexico border wall.

All eyes were on the talks between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, rivals seeking a way out of the deepening crisis.

Normally paid every two weeks, 800,000 federal workers — many of whom are being forced to work without pay — missed a second straight paycheck Friday, a situation that has reached a crisis point for thousands of American families.

The urgency was made plain Friday as flight delays rippled across parts of the eastern US due to staffing shortages in airports where employees, including air traffic controllers, have been ordered to work without pay. 

The Federal Aviation Administration said ground delays remained in effect at La Guardia, the New York region’s third-largest airport, while the airport in Atlanta, one of the world’s busiest, is at Code Red, with flight delays of one hour.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that the shutdown “has already pushed hundreds of thousands of Americans to the breaking point.”

“Now it’s pushing our airspace to the breaking point too,” she tweeted, calling on Trump to “stop endangering the safety, security and well-being of our nation.”

Late Thursday, Pelosi told AFP she remained “hopeful” that a deal to reopen government could be struck soon, and was staying in Washington in case negotiations lead to a breakthrough.

“We work towards that,” she said. 

Wall funding remains the stumbling block. Trump insists any temporary deal should have a “downpayment” on a wall, a demand Democrats oppose. 

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham encouraged his Democratic colleagues to get on board.

“To my Democratic friends: Money for a barrier is required to get this deal done,” he said on the Senate floor, explaining that Trump’s spending of the funds would be limited to plans approved by the Department of Homeland Security.

Graham was seen entering McConnell’s office Friday.

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