No talk of solution to shutdown, president tweets blame
President Donald Trump was firing Twitter barbs at Democrats this weekend as talks to end a weeklong partial government shutdown remained at a stalemate.
Trump was cooped up in the White House after cancelling a vacation to his private Florida club.
As the disruption in federal services and public employees’ pay appeared set to continue into the new year, there were no signs of any substantive negotiation between the blame-trading parties. White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that Trump is not reaching out to Democrats, rather he’s waiting for Democrats to reach out to him.
“It is with them,” she told Fox News Sunday.
Trump is holding out for billions in federal funds for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, which Democrats have said they were intent on blocking.
There has been little direct contact between the sides during the stalemate, and Trump did not ask Republicans, who hold a monopoly on power in Washington until Jan. 3, to keep Congress in session.
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he hoped to end the shutdown by offering Democrats incentives to get them to vote for wall funding.
“To my Democratic friends, there will never be a deal without wall funding,” Graham said Sunday on CNN.
Graham is proposing to help two groups of immigrants to continue living in the U.S. with permission from the federal government: about 700,000 young “Dreamer” immigrants brought illegally as children and about 400,000 people receiving temporary protected status because they are from countries struggling with natural disasters or armed conflicts. He also said the compromise should include changes in federal law to discourage people from trying to enter the U.S. illegally. “Democrats have a chance here to work with me and others, including the president, to bring legal status to people who have very uncertain lives,” Graham said.
He said he would discuss the proposal with Trump Sunday over lunch at the White House, though it was unclear if the president or Democrats were open to such an approach. A previous deal that addressed the status of Dreamers failed to pass as a result of escalating White House demands.
As he called for Democrats to negotiate on the wall, Trump brushed off criticism that his administration bore any responsibility for the recent deaths of two migrant children in Border Patrol custody. Trump claimed the deaths were “strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally.” His comments on Twitter came as his Homeland Security secretary met with medical professionals and ordered policy changes meant to better protect children detained at the border.
Trump earlier had upped the brinkmanship by threatening anew to close the border with Mexico to press Congress to cave to his demand for money to pay for a wall.