Talks between White House officials and congressional leaders are hung up over President Donald Trump’s repeated demands for money to build a wall on the southern border, and a burst of late-afternoon activity could not break the deadlock.
Vice President Mike Pence rushed to the Capitol to meet with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and senior House Republicans, searching for a solution to a logjam that Trump has show little interest in breaking.
While the president has been unwilling to consider dropping his demand to fund his signature campaign promise, Pence and other White House officials were discussing a number of potential compromises that would force him to do just that, omitting spending on a wall and instead adding money for other security measures at the border, according to several officials with knowledge of the talks.
President Donald Trump looks to Vice President Mike Pence at the signing ceremony for a criminal justice reform bill, at the White House in Washington, Dec 21, 2018. Flanking Trump are Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Representative Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) Tom Brenner/The New York Times[/caption]In the absence of a deal, the capital prepared itself for a shutdown that would affect nine federal departments and several other agencies, including hundreds of thousands of federal employees.Trump shelved plans to go to his winter estate in Florida, and as night fell, the House adjourned until Saturday.
There had been a glimmer of progress late in the day when the Senate voted, 48-47, with Pence breaking a tie, to begin debating stopgap spending legislation passed by the House on Thursday night that would keep the government running through Feb 8 and provide $5.7 billion to begin construction of the border wall.
But the vote — which dragged on all day as Senate leaders struggled without success to win a simple majority to even consider it — was more a repudiation of Trump’s proposal than an endorsement of it. Senators in both parties conceded that the measure could not pass the Senate, where major legislation requires bipartisan support, and said they were advancing it only to allow negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders in both parties to proceed on a compromise that all sides could accept.
Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, the majority leader, said the Senate had approved the measure “in order to preserve maximum flexibility for productive conversations to continue between the White House and our Democratic colleagues.”
Schumer said the vote only underscored what Democrats had been telling Trump since last week, when the president declared during a combative Oval Office meeting that he would be proud to shut down the government and shoulder the blame if he could not win support to fund his border wall.
“His wall does not have 60 votes here in the Senate, let alone 50 votes — that much is now clear,” Schumer said. “We are willing to continue discussions” on proposals to keep the government funded, he added.
Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hold a news conference outside of the House chambers, in Washington, Dec 20, 2018. A deal to avert a Christmastime government shutdown teetered on Thursday after President Donald Trump told House Republican leaders he would not sign a stopgap spending bill to keep funds flowing past midnight Friday if it does not include border-wall funding. Tom Brenner/ For The New York Times[/caption]The vote unfolded as Pence, along with Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director and incoming chief of staff, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, huddled in the Capitol to jump-start negotiations. The prospect of a deal has been hampered by the president’s refusal to budge on the wall, or to indicate what alternatives he would be willing to accept to keep the government open.
Among the options discussed was a proposal that would allocate a total of $2.5 billion for border security, none of which could be spent on a wall. But it was not clear that conservatives in the House, who insisted Thursday on adding $5.7 billion for the physical barrier the president has demanded to the stopgap spending measure, would back that solution.
“What I want is real money for the wall,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
With the clock ticking toward a shutdown Friday, Trump remained adamant as well and appeared resigned to a shutdown, saying he hoped to keep funds flowing past midnight but that his adversaries must agree to fund his border wall.
“Now it’s up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown tonight,” Trump said at the White House on Friday morning, moments after meeting with Senate Republicans. “I hope we don’t, but we are totally prepared for a very long shutdown. This is our only chance that we will ever have, in our opinion.”
It was a striking reversal from his televised declaration during the Oval Office meeting a week ago that he relished the prospect of shuttering the government to force Democrats to accept a wall, and that he would not blame them for the outcome.
In a meeting in his office just off the Senate floor, Schumer flatly informed Pence, Mulvaney and Kushner, who had requested to meet with him, that any measure that included money for the wall could not pass the Senate, and urged them to consider agreeing to one that omitted it but included funding for other forms of border security, according to a spokesman.
FILE PHOTO: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct 6, 2018. McConnell has long said that there was no support for dismantling the 60-vote requirement on Senate legislation, as the president has urged, and he and a number of senior Republicans released statements on Friday morning making it clear it would not happen. Erin Schaff/The New York Times[/caption]Complicating the chances of such a deal was the president’s own refusal to detail his bottom line in negotiations. During a meeting with Republican senators Friday morning, Trump would not provide specifics about what kind of plan he could support, including how much money he would accept for fortifying the border, despite their repeated efforts to ascertain his conditions for a deal, according to a Senate official briefed on the session who insisted on anonymity to describe it. The president talked at length about the wall and repeatedly pressed the senators about eliminating the filibuster so they could fund it with 51 votes.
Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, the No. 2 Republican, appeared practically giddy at the prospect that Trump’s aides were engaging in serious talks with lawmakers, saying, “The fact that that’s happening represents real progress,” and adding that he was “so happy about it.”
Without a strategy for averting a shutdown, Trump spent the day manoeuvring to ensure that Democrats would shoulder the blame, notwithstanding his public courting of the dysfunctional denouement.
He began the day warning on Twitter that a partial government shutdown “will last for a very long time.”
“If enough Dems don’t vote, it will be a Democrat Shutdown!” Trump wrote. “House Republicans were great yesterday!”
He was referring to a nearly party line vote in the House on Thursday night to add the wall funding to the stopgap spending bill despite almost certain defeat of the measure once it reached the Senate. House Republicans also added roughly $8 billion in disaster aid for farmers, a critical sweetener that helped advance a bill that they feared until the last moment might not have enough votes to pass.
Yet the only certainty to emerge was an intense round of political blame-shifting.
House passage of the wall funding did change the dynamics of the fight, putting Senate Democrats in the position of being the spoilers of a measure to keep the government running. Democrats, who believe their leverage will only grow when they assume the majority in the House in January, did not appear to be cowed by the tactic.
“Abandon your shutdown strategy,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, addressing his remarks to the president. “You’re not getting the wall today, next week, or on Jan 3 when Democrats take control of the House.”
The president also urged McConnell to pursue what is known as the nuclear option and abolish a rule that allows any senator to block final votes on legislation, often used by the minority party to thwart major bills. The tactic was used by Senate Democrats to lower the threshold to 51 votes and end a Republican blockade of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. Senate Republicans then used the same move to end filibusters of Supreme Court nominees.
“Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done!” Trump tweeted. “Our Country is counting on you!”
McConnell has long said that there was no support for dismantling the 60-vote requirement on legislation, and he and a number of senior Republican senators released statements Friday morning in advance of the meeting with Trump making it clear it would not happen.
With funding set to expire, the nine federal departments and several other agencies were beginning to prepare themselves. Some agencies will have enough money in the pipeline to carry them into the new year, but thousands of government workers are expected to be furloughed or required to work through the holidays without pay.
“It’s actually part of what you do when you sign up for any public service position,” Representative Mark Meadows, R-North Carolina, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters Thursday. “It’s not lost on me in terms of the potential hardship.”
Several House lawmakers blamed Pelosi and Schumer for the impending shutdown, arguing that they were unwilling to compromise on border security. But with Democrats set to reclaim the House majority in two weeks, there is little motivation for Pelosi to acquiesce to the president’s demands.
In the aftermath of Trump’s insistence that he would own a government shutdown, House Democratic aides had already begun crafting legislation that would reopen the government come Jan 3 and the swearing-in of new members.
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