US House passes bills to end govt shutdown
White House says Trump defiant, won’t sign the bills
WASHINGTON: In a sign of how far apart Republicans and Democrats remained on the raging issue of Us-mexico border wall funding, the White House has announced that President Donald Trump won’t sign the bills that the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has passed in order to reopen the shuttered federal agencies.
If either of the two legislative measures “were presented to the president, his advisors would recommend that he veto the bill”, the White House said in a statement on Thursday evening.
The House passed two separate legislative measures to end the partial shutdown and reopen the affected departments.
A six-bill package fully funded departments of agriculture, transportation, state, treasury and interior for a year, and a second bill provided temporary funding to the department of homeland security till February, allowing more time for negotiations over Trump’s proposed wall along the border with Mexico.
Neither set of legislations contained any funding for the wall. Senate Republicans have refused to table for vote any legislation that is not supported by Trump.
“What we’re asking the Republicans in the Senate to do is to take ‘yes’ for an answer. We are sending them back exactly, word for word, what they have passed,” said Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. “Why would they not do that? Is it because the president won’t sign it?”
Trump will meet congressional leaders, including Pelosi, later in an attempt to break the stalemate and end the shutdown that started on December 22, 2018.
Trump has sought $5 billion for the border wall - which he has said can be a fence made of steel slats, in a symbolic climbdown to signal flexibility - but Democrats were willing to allow him only $1.3 billion, to be used for boosting security along the border.