Live updates: The shutdown

Here’s more on what that means (and why it likely won’t matter).

The Senate has adjourned for the day until noon Saturday and is expected to remain in session until 4 p.m., Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said as he wrapped up the day’s proceedings.

There were no significant talks Friday between the House and the Senate, but before adjourning, Reid presented Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) with her “Golden Gavel” award for having presided over the Senate for at least 100 hours. And the Senate also unanimously approved a measure deeming next week as National Chess Week.

Another day, another lack of a deal.

The government shutdown now wrapping up its fourth day has forced lawmakers to cancel committee hearings, play tour guide for constituents, go without their catered hot lunches and to ration precious commodities.

The scramble is on, especially at the House and Senate gyms, where trainers and attendants are on furlough, according to several lawmakers who frequent the facilities. Knowing they’d likely be temporarily out of a job within hours, House gym laundry staffers left behind about 250 cleaned and pressed towels. But lawmakers say they were mostly used up by Wednesday.

One senator, who asked not to be identified in order to candidly discuss locker room behavior, confirmed that several members are allowing their towels to air dry over locker doors.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), one of the gym’s most frequent visitors, said, “There’s no attendants, there’s no one there, but you can go in and use it if you want to. Just as you could jog outside.”

Tourists kept coming to Capitol Hill this week, even though the multimillion dollar Capitol Visitors Center is closed to the general public. But constituents lucky enough to prearrange a visit with their lawmaker are permitted access.

Read more.

Not everyone bemoaning the shutdown.

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) says in a new interview with Bloomberg that Republicans have “lost” the budget debate and should move on to the debt ceiling debate.

“We’ve lost the CR battle,” Ross said. “We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit.”

Ross is one of a few Republicans who have suggested they might support the Senate-passed continuing resolution.

U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman canceled negotiations scheduled for next week in Europe because of “financial and staffing constraints” imposed by the government shut down.

In an e-mailed release, Froman’s office said that they could not bring a “full team of negotiators” to talks in Brussels next week on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and needed to postpone the meeting.

It is the second blow to U.S. trade discussions. Obama on Thursday cancelled a trip to Asia where officials hoped he could advance negotiations toward a Pacific free trade agreement.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said on the Senate floor Friday that Republicans were actually compromising when they attempted to defund Obamacare.

Cruz explains:

“It is the view of every Republican in this body, and indeed every Republican in the House, that Obamacare should be entirely and completely repealed. Nonetheless, the House started with a compromise of saying, not repealing Obamacare, but simply that it should be defunded.”

Here’s the video, which was posted by the Democratic National Committee.

One of the most high-profile effects of the shutdown has been the closure of monuments and memorials on the Mall.

Of course, a big reason so much attention has been paid to the shuttering of the World War II Memorial and other landmarks is because groups of veterans have stormed these spots anyway. A group of World War II veterans visited the memorial to that war on Tuesday, bypassing the barriers; the same day, Korean War veterans moved the barricades at the Korean War Veterans Memorial to lay a wreath. The scene repeated itself on Wednesday, with another group of veterans (again accompanied by members of Congress) entering the grounds of the World War II Memorial.

Stories about veterans storming closed memorials were quickly picked up by news outlets and spread far and wide on social media platforms.

But all closures are not created equally. The Smithsonian museums on the Mall? Those are definitely locked. Some of the parks and memorials around D.C.? Not so much.

On Friday, the fourth day of the shutdown, gates and closed signs remained but visitors weren’t paying them much heed. The Post’s Michael Ruane reports that at the World War II Memorial on Friday, visitors simply walked by the park rangers manning a gate without being stopped. The American Legion also held a news conference there, saying they want the memorial to stay open. At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, gates had been pushed aside, and the memorial was crowded with visitors.

This followed several days of similar events around the Mall and elsewhere. Children played on Wednesday inside supposedly closed parks on Capitol Hill.

Still, even though visitors are still making their way into closed memorials and strolling around the Mall, they are encountering a different problem. Some memorials may be accessible, but the bathrooms are all closed.

With the Gulf Coast expecting landfall by Tropical Storm Karen this weekend, the White House says FEMA is recalling some of its staff furloughed during the government shutdown. (CBS News)

The failed negotiations in Congress and subsequent government shutdown provided ample fodder for late-night comedians over the past week. On Background’s Nia-Malika Henderson looks back at some of the best digs at Washington dysfunction. Watch the full episode here.

From Post Politics:

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), an Iraq war veteran, on Friday called on Washington politicians to stop using terrorism metaphors during the current budget debate.

Speaking on the House floor, Wenstrup addressed both sides of the debate, but also focused on the White House’s comments equating Republicans to someone “with a bomb strapped to their chest.”

“I have heard references to being ‘terrorists,’ to ‘jihad’ and to having ‘bombs strapped to our chests,'” Wenstrup said. “I spent one year, 2005-2006 — perhaps the bloodiest time of the war — as an Army combat surgeon in Iraq. In this chamber, I have seen no ‘terrorists,’ no ‘jihad,’ nor any ‘bombs strapped to chests.’ If you have been to war, you would not use such rhetoric here.”

Democratic Rep. George Miller (Calif.) on Thursday accused Republicans of waging a “jihad” against Obamacare.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Friday cited the Capitol Police’s handling of an incident Thursday in which a woman evading police was shot and killed, saying Congress needs to end the shutdown and pay the police, who are working without pay.

“They were doing their duty … and we should pay them for it,” Durbin said at a news conference with Democratic leaders.

Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) on Friday ordered city sanitation workers to empty trash cans on federal parkland, citing “a concern for the spread of vermin.”

“It is imperative that someone remove the trash in a timely fashion before garbage piles up and rodents and other vermin are attracted,” Gray said in a statement. “Because the federal government cannot step up to provide this basic service to District residents and visitors, I have authorized [the D.C. public works department] to service the litter cans for the duration of the federal shutdown.”

Gray said city crews will service only parks that are accessible to the public, such as the Mall and federal reservations such as Dupont Circle. They will not serve areas that have been barricaded by the National Park Service.

The District government has remained open during the federal shutdown, drawing on a special reserve fund while the city budget remains in limbo alongside spending for federal agencies. The reserve fund is expected to last until about Oct. 13.

At least, that’s the case at Z-Burger, which had been giving away free burgers to those who are out of work because of the shutdown.

From Huffington Post:

Citing “overwhelming crowds,” Z-Burger owner Peter Tabibian said in a news release that the program would end on Thursday — four days into the partial government shutdown which has left some 800,000 employees on unpaid leave.

“I wanted to do something nice for the federal workers,” Tabibian told HuffPost. “I thought I was going to do my little part to make things a little easier.”

That little part turned out to be more jumbo-sized than he’d bargained for. “Every day we are giving away $30,000 worth of food,” he said, explaining that this amount translates to about “5-6,000 burgers” per day at his four D.C. locations. Tababian also said lines “200 deep” are burning out his employees.

“I’m sorry I can’t do it longer than Thursday. It’s going to put me out of business,” he said.

The Obama administration said it supports the House GOP’s move to allow a vote on a bill that would pay furloughed federal employees for work they would have done if the government weren’t shut down.

“The Administration appreciates that the Congress is acting promptly to move this bipartisan legislation and looks forward to the bill’s swift passage,” the Office of Management and Budget says.

It adds: “This bill alone, however, will not address the serious consequences of the funding lapse, nor will a piecemeal approach to appropriations bills.”

From Juliet Eilperin:

Asked by a reporter about the remark made by a senior administration official in Friday’s Wall Street Journal that the White House was “winning” the current budget battle, Obama replied “there’s no winning,” and “no one is winning” as long as Americans are not working.

As Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) was speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.), who was presiding over the chamber at the time, caught a bit of shut-eye. (CBS News)

House GOP leaders announced Friday that they will hold a vote Saturday on paying furloughed federal employees for time they would have worked during the shutdown — just as Congress did after the last shutdown 17 years ago.

The bill will in all likelihood pass, but will Republicans vote for it?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), for one, isn’t saying how he would vote.

Just interviewed Sen. Ted Cruz. He refused to say if he’d support retroactive back pay for furloughed gov’t workers. #shutdown

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) October 4, 2013

It’s not hard to see the bill running into at least some opposition among cast-iron conservatives (potentially including Cruz) who will balk at the expense and at paying federal employees for work that they didn’t actually perform. As of now, the bill has 182 co-sponsors, and just 30 of them are Republicans.

GOP leaders seem to think they have the votes — otherwise they wouldn’t schedule the vote — but there could be a significant contingent of their members that votes no.

And given that the idea of retroactive pay is undoubtedly very popular — at least broadly speaking — that could cause some problems.

Restaurants and bars have been offering food and drink specials all week to furloughed workers. Some of the deals extended early in the week have expired, while others are still ongoing. Head to the Going Out Guide to find the latest on where you can eat and drink cheaply during the shutdown.

The federal government shutdown results in about $150 million in lost wages every day, according to a new private-sector analysis.

Some 373,000 federal jobs are in the D.C. metro area, which includes counties in Northern Virginia and Maryland, according to Charlie Dougherty, an economist with the economic and financial analysis firm IHS Global Insight. If the government stays closed for two weeks, Washington’s fourth-quarter economic growth will be a full percentage point lower than it would be otherwise, he found.

“[T]he effects will ripple out to industries not directly involved, such as the leisure and hospitality sector, which depends on the disposable incomes of federal workers to operate and might see a drop in sales receipts,” he said in his analysis.

Federal employment has fallen every month this year and is 3 percent down on an annual basis, Dougherty notes.

We’ve been keeping close tabs on the number of House Republicans who support a so-called “clean” continuing resolution.

The reason: It suggests that something close to a majority of House now supports a clean bill (most or all 200 Democrats plus 20 Republicans) and would vote for it if House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) brought it to a vote today.

Dave Weigel has a different take:

But the story’s not quite true. The 20-odd Republicans have made sure of that. On Wednesday night, House Democrats attempted to use the vote on the previous question to pre-empt votes on “mini-CRs” and bring up a clean bill. Every single Republican voted no — including the “clean” team.

So: New Jersey Rep. Frank LoBiondo has been quoted saying he’d back “whatever gets a successful conclusion,” including a clean CR. Today, when I asked why he voted against the Democrats’ “previous question” gambit, he shook his head and told me to “get your rules straight — that was appealing the ruling of the chair.” Were there enough votes for a clean CR? “I’m not the one to ask,” he said.

Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell, who has been cited many, many times as a Republican willing to bend, agreed with LoBiondo on procedure. “There really was a genuine debate about the rule, and whether the rule itself was germane,” he said. “It wasn’t a motion to recommit. I wouldn’t violate what I thought were the rules of the House to advance an agenda.”

…

“You have to call Cruz,” said California Rep. Devin Nunes, who’s been calling for a clean CR for days, when a reporter asked him about the party’s next moves. “I’m not even joking about that. He’s the one that set up the strategy. He’s the one that got us into this mess.”

I asked Nunes why he opposed the Democrats on Wednesday. “There’s not going to be a clean CR vote right now,” he said. “There’s not the votes for it.”

Pres Obama and VP Biden (in sunglasses) stroll up West Executive Ave toward Penn Ave on lunch outing. pic.twitter.com/1I6hve7Gfc

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) October 4, 2013

The two went to Taylor Gourmet, according to a pool report.

Update 1:09 p.m.: Obama said they went to Taylor Gourmet because the restaurant is offering a 10 percent discount for furloughed federal workers — a reflection of Americans working with each other to get through the shutdown.

So this is all about the deficit, right?

It’s true that House Republicans are holding up a spending bill, but they’re not holding it up over demands for spending cuts or tax increases or some other package of deficit reduction. In fact, they’re happy with the level of spending in the bill. It’s a number they proposed, after all.

For that reason, it was widely assumed that passing a continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels would be a relatively uncontroversial proposition. But then Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) came in. They declared that they wouldn’t support a continuing resolution that doesn’t “defund” Obamacare. That failed, so then they said they wouldn’t vote on a CR that didn’t delay Obamacare. Then it was a CR that didn’t delay the individual mandate.

Senate Democrats (not to mention the Obama administration) weren’t willing to dismantle Obamacare as a cost of keeping the government open. Republicans weren’t willing to keep the government open unless Democrats let them dismantle Obamacare. So the government closed. (Here’s absolutely everything you need to know about government shutdowns.)

For more, head to Wonkblog.

Despite the shuttered museums and the closed memorials, some visitors are still making their way to the Mall. But they are encountering a key problem, reports Michael Ruane: no bathrooms.

There are restrooms at the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Washington Monument, but they are all locked. And since the museums along the Mall are also closed, those bathrooms are similarly unavailable.

“I was just crying because I couldn’t go to the bathroom for over like 45 minutes, “said Jennifer Lioy, 27, who was visiting from Rochester, N.Y.

The issue of restrooms is a chronic problem on the Mall with many visitors saying there were too few, even before the shutdown 

The House is scheduled to vote Saturday on a bill that would ensure that the roughly 800,000 nonessential federal employees furloughed by the government shutdown would receive compensation once the impasse ends.

Current law requires that essential personnel on the job during the shutdown must be paid once the government reopens, but says nothing about nonessential workers.

The bill set for a vote Saturday says that nonessential personnel would be paid “as soon as practicable” once the shutdown is over.

The measure is expected to earn bipartisan support, but there is no guarantee that the Senate would also vote on and pass the bill. Senate Democratic leaders have thus far ignored a slew of short-term spending bills approved by the GOP-controlled House, arguing that they will only approve a “clean” continuing resolution that leaves intact the Affordable Care Act and funds the entire federal government.

Foreign government officials said Friday they regretted the fact that President Obama had canceled his trip to Asia in light of the government shutdown, though they did not blame him for staying in Washington.

“We are disappointed,” said Indonesian Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring, accoring to a Reuters report. Indonesia is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Bali starting Sunday. “I think the summit will go on, there is a long-term plan. (But) without Obama, you can imagine how disappointed we are. We could hardly imagine he wouldn’t come.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told the Russian news agency Interfax that Putin had been looking forward to seeing Obama at the APEC summit.

We regret that this meeting will not take place because, on the whole, there is certainly an extensive need in bilateral relations to continue dialogue at the highest level due to the presence of multiple issues on the bilateral agenda and, primarily, on the international agenda, topped by Syria,” Peskov said, adding that Russian officials treat “the ongoing situation in the United States” with understanding. We hope that this situation will be sorted out. We also look forward to the next opportunity to hold such a bilateral meeting.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday disavowed a comment from an anonymous senior administration official who said the White House didn’t care how long the shutdown lasts because it’s “winning.”

.@morningmoneyben This is absurd. POTUS wants the shutdown to end NOW. Speaker can do that NOW by putting a clean CR to a vote. #JustVote

— Jay Carney (EOP) (@PressSec) October 4, 2013

.@morningmoneyben So am I, Ben. We utterly disavow idea WH doesn’t care when it ends. House should act now, no strings attached. #JustVote

— Jay Carney (EOP) (@PressSec) October 4, 2013

The GOP is now focused like a laser on an anonymous White House official’s comment that the administration is “winning” the shutdown debate.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Said a senior administration official: “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.”

But while “we’re winning” is definitely quotable, it’s not the most pivotal part of the quote. Instead, Republicans will (or would be wise to) focus on the latter part of the quote in which the official says it “doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts.

Why?

Because of course this is about winning and getting what you want — and the GOP has said much the same thing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on a hot mike with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday: “We’re going to win this, I think.”

What’s potentially more damaging is when the official says that the length of the shutdown doesn’t matter. That’s when we leave the realm of gamesmanship and get into the realm of insensitivity — particularly given many federal workers have been furloughed, and Americans have been otherwise affected by the shutdown.

Republicans will use the latter part of the quote to cast the White House as uncaring — which is a better line of attack than simply that they want to “win” this debate.

That’s why White House press secretary Jay Carney was quick to separate the White House from that part of the quote, tweeting Friday that he “disavows” the idea.

Kirk Johnson, pictured with the current exhibition of dinosaurs at the Natural History museum. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

The latest victim of the shutdown has been dead for 65 million years.

It is the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that was scheduled to be delivered this month to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The fossil’s cross-county trip has been postponed until next spring, museum director Kirk Johnson said Friday morning.

“Our primary goal is the safety and security of this specimen,” Johnson said. “It just doesn’t make sense to make the move now.”

The fossil — one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever recovered — belongs to the Army Corps of Engineers and has been in Montana since the late Cretaceous Period.

Smithsonian paleontologists and preparation staff and Army Corps personnel were supposed to be in Bozeman next week to inspect and catalog the specimen, which is coming to Washington on a long-term loan. It was scheduled to depart Bozeman by truck on Oct. 11 and arrive in Washington in time for its introduction on the Mall on Oct. 16 — National Fossil Day.

But, Johnson said, most of the museum’s 472 staff members aren’t working due to the shutdown. The Army Corps, too, is short-staffed. Ditto the National Park Service, which produces the National Fossil Day event. Oh, and the Mall is closed.

“We’re all playing with our hands tied behind our backs,” Johnson said. “It made a complicated situation more complicated. You don’t want to mess up something as important as this, so we did what was prudent.”

The fossil — known as the Wankel Rex, after the woman who discovered it in a remote section of a Montana wildlife refuge — will remain in a Museum of the Rockies storage facility until next year, Johnson said.

It is not scheduled to go on permanent display until 2019, when the National Museum opens its new dinosaur hall, “so we had some flexibility; we didn’t need to move it” right away, he said.

But still, he added: “I’m terribly disappointed. … As a paleontologist, I’ve been looking forward to a Tyrannosaurus rex to come here for a long time.”

House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) says the House will vote Saturday on a measure ensuring that all federal employees are paid for the duration of the shutdown regardless of their status, whether they are furloughed or not.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.)  introduced the bill on Tuesday along with sponsor Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.). As of Thursday, 120 lawmakers, including 18 Republicans, had added their names to the measure.

“Everyone I’ve talked to about this bill seems to be for it,” Wolf said Thursday of his colleagues in the House.

All of the Republicans who co-sponsored the House measure are from Virginia, a state with a high concentration of federal workers. They include Wolf and Reps. Rob Wittman, Scott Rigell and Randy Forbes.

Labor groups have commended the two back-pay measures. National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen M. Kelley said in a letter to the sponsors that federal workers are “unsure when they might be able to return to their federal offices, unsure whether or not they will be able to make their next rent or mortgage payment and frustrated and scared about their future.”

House Speaker John Boener (R-Ohio) on Friday attacked the White House after an anonymous official told The Wall Street Journal that the administration was “winning” the shutdown debate and that it “doesn’t really matter” how long the shutdown lasts.

“This isn’t some damn game,” an animated Boehner said. “The American people don’t want their government shut down and neither do I. All we’re asking for is to sit down and have a discussion and to bring fairness — reopen the government and bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare. It’s as simple as that. But it all has to begin with a simple discussion.”

Here’s the operative quote from WSJ:

Said a senior administration official: “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.”

Boehner also suggested reports of strain between him and Democratic leaders were overblown. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday said Boehner was “single-handedly” responsible for the shutdown and lacked the “courage” to stand up to his party — an unusually personal attack.

“I have very good relationships with all of my colleagues across the aisle; it’s me,” Boehner said, noting his reputation as an affable politician.

Federal workers looking for something to do during the shutdown can consider heading back to the classroom. Georgetown is offering six free courses for furloughed employees, ranging from management classes to classes on health care and media.

That’s what Scott Clement of our polling team says.

Here’s his take:

Americans are blaming congressional Republicans more than President Obama for causing Tuesday’s federal government shutdown, according to the first polls conducted since Washington came to a halt at midnight Monday.

While the initial reaction is worse for Republicans, their share of blame is not as lopsided as during the 1995 shutdowns when Bill Clinton was in office, and polls disagree on whether Obama is gaining popularity or just holding steady as the standoff progresses.

By 44 percent to 35 percent, more say Republicans in Congress are to blame than Obama/Democrats for the shutdown in a CBS News poll conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. A simultaneous Fox News poll of registered voters found 42 percent saying either “Republican leaders” or “Tea party Republicans, such as Ted Cruz,” are responsible while 32 percent blamed Obama or “Democratic leaders, such as Harry Reid.”

Many Americans blame both sides. Fully 17 percent volunteer Obama/Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame in the CBS News poll, while 20 percent in the Fox poll said some combination of the parties are responsible for the shutdown.

Republican blame for the current shutdown is not as one-sided as it was after the last shutdown in 1995-96. Then, nearly twice as many Americans blamed Republicans as Clinton — 50 to 27 percent — in a Post-ABC poll right after the 21-day shutdown that ended on January 6, 1996.

Click on the link above for more.

An annual event honoring the most dedicated federal workers was held on Thursday, but with the government shut down, that created several headaches.

The singer who was supposed to lead the crowd in the national anthem could no longer do so because of the government shutdown….

That was just one of the challenges of hosting the glitzy event during a government shutdown. Several finalists were not allowed to travel to Washington for the ceremony. Of this year’s nine honorees, four were deemed “nonessential” and were sent home by their agencies as President Obama and congressional Republicans try yet again to resolve their differences over the Affordable Care Act and other issues.

Still, the event gave government workers a chance to take a break from being deemed nonessential. It gave them a night to be recognized and celebrated rather than discarded.

Head here to read Jenna Johnson’s report.

Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.) said on his Twitter feed that he would vote for a “clean” continuing resolution if it came to a vote.

@ShaunGARK sure. Ive already said i would support

— Tim Griffin (@TimGriffinAR2) October 2, 2013

Griffin is the 20th House Republican that we’ve seen saying he or she would support a clean bill if it came to a vote. Here’s our latest whip count.

According to Vice President Biden’s Twitter feed, he phoned the Park Service ranger who was publicly shamed by GOP Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) on Wednesday.

“I’m proud of you,” VP called to tell the Park Ranger who was chastised by a GOP Rep today at the WWII Memorial.

— Office of VP Biden (@VP) October 3, 2013

We missed this on Thursday, but it bears posting.

It’s video of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) strategizing between TV appearances.

Neither says anything terribly surprising — Paul thinks the GOP can win by emphasizing its willingness to compromise and the Democrats’ no-negotiation strategy — but it’s a little window into what members say when they don’t think they’re being broadcast.

(As President Obama can attest, though, when you’re near a microphone you should probably act accordingly.)

Dana Hedgpeth reports:

Day 4 of the federal government shutdown is bringing an unwanted – and unsightly – look in areas around the Mall and near national monuments in Washington.

Trash cans are overflowing along the Mall, officials said, as workers for the National Park Service are furloughed, and there’s virtually no one to empty them.

Of the roughly 300 employees who help manage and run the Mall – all but six are furloughed, according to Mike Litterst, acting chief spokesman for the park service.

“That’s the people who empty trash and cut grass and make the area look like the public expects it to look – inviting and well-maintained, just aren’t there,” he said.

Pizza boxes, empty water bottles and half eaten donuts filled one trash can on a sidewalk near the World War II memorial.

“It certainly is unsightly in areas that are as pristine as the monuments and memorials,” Litterst said. Not to mention, he said, the “health effects” and “what [overflowing trash cans] can draw in terms of pests, insects and rodents.”

The trash problem is especially acute in Washington where so many of the monuments and malls are open, making it especially hard for officials to keep people from using them.

“D.C. is an urban area,” Litterst said. “We can’t fence it and close it off. At Yellowstone, you close the gates and nobody can get in.”

“We haven’t fenced off the Mall,” he said. “People are back and forth through it. I would expect the trash cans are going to keep filling up.”

In 1995 when the federal government shut down, the furlough lasted 28 days, and the trash and grass weren’t as much of a problem, according to Litterst, because the shutdown happened in the winter months — November, December and January.

“There were considerably less people out and around,” he said, “because of the weather at that time of year.”

But this time, the unseasonably warm fall weather means people are out, and there’s a fair number of visitors in town.

The overflowing trash, Litterst said, is “one of the big tragedies” in the furlough’s impact.

These marathon debates can be tiring — as evidenced by freshman Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.) appearing to fall asleep while presiding over the House on Thursday night.

See the photo from CSPAN here.

From Federal Eye blogger Josh Hicks:

House and Senate lawmakers this week proposed legislation to retroactively pay the roughly 800,000 federal workers who are furloughed because of the partial government shutdown that started Tuesday.

The House back-pay measure could be up for a floor vote as early as Saturday, according to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who introduced the bill on Tuesday along with sponsor Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.). As of Thursday, 120 lawmakers, including 18 Republicans, had added their names to the measure.

Read the full report.

From Metro reporter Dana Hedgpeth:

The popular Capital Bikeshare program, where riders can rent a bike and drop it off at various locations throughout the Washington region, has seen a spike in its business, officials said, and the federal government shutdown may be playing a role.

On Tuesday, the first full day of the shutdown, Capital Bikeshare had its 18th busiest day — and its busiest Tuesday — ever, with 10,367 rides. The number of riders also set a record: 9,028.

On Wednesday, the Capital BikeShare tallied 10,393 rides — its 17th busiest day ever.  D.C. transportation officials who help manage the program said they can’t say with certainty that the increase in business is related to the government shutdown. They said warm temperatures this week may have had something to do with it too.

Read the full report on Dr. Gridlock.

From White House reporter Juliet Eilperin:

President Obama’s long-planned trip to Asia represented a chance to make progress on foreign policy even as Republicans stymied his plans at home.

In the end, domestic politics trumped all.

The White House canceled the entire trip late Thursday night, concluding it could not go ahead with even a curtailed five-day visit to Indonesia and Brunei during a partial government shutdown. And in doing so, Obama may have reinforced the perception that the United State may be incapable of following through on its overseas commitments.

Read the full analysis on The Fix.

From GovBeat’s Niraj Chokshi:

At least four Head Start early childhood education programs have ceased operations since the federal government shutdown. And another joins the list Friday, resulting in more than 5,000 children going without services nationwide.

Georgia’s Ninth District Opportunity Inc. Head Start program is the fifth and largest known program to have stopped operations since the federal government shut down Tuesday.

“We will be shut down as of Friday,” NDO Head Start Director Kay Laws said in a Thursday e-mail to The Washington Post. NDO serves 2,153 children in 113 classrooms, according to a news release.

Read the full report here.

From The Fix’s Sean Sullivan:

After the federal government shutdown threatened the wedding plans of Washington-area residents Mike Cassesso and MaiLien Le, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert took matters into his own hands Thursday.

The couple had planned to wed at the Jefferson Memorial, site of their first date. But the shutdown threw a wrench in their plans. Enter Colbert, who convinced the couple to marry on his faux-news program.

Watch the video here.

From Federal Eye blogger Josh Hicks:

Four days into the government shutdown and with no end to the closure yet in sight, two of the largest federal-worker unions have scheduled a rally in Washington to protest the relative lack of progress by political leaders.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union will take part in the demonstration slated for Friday at 11 a.m. at the House Triangle on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.

Labor leaders will emphasizing that the public servants on furlough because of the shutdown would rather do their jobs than be caught up in a political impasse, according to an announcements from the unions.

Read the full report here.