Deal dead, $25B for wall ‘off table,’ Schumer says
WASHINGTON — Top Senate Democrat Charles Schumer on Tuesday pulled back an offer of $25 billion for President Donald Trump’s long-promised southern border wall as lawmakers scrambled to figure out how to push a deal to protect 700,000 or more so-called Dreamers from deportation.
Schumer had made the offer Friday in an effort to head off a government shutdown.
“It was part of a package” on immigration that didn’t come together, he said. “We’re going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer’s off the table,” Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday.
The shutdown battle complicated the search for an immigration pact: GOP hard-liners appeared emboldened, while Democrats absorbed withering criticism from progressives. Neither development seemed likely
to push the sides toward the compromises needed to produce a bill that can pass both the tea party-driven House and the more pragmatic Senate.
Still, there were fresh signs of a willingness to keep hunting for a solution, with a flurry of meetings on Capitol Hill and an assessment from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that “I don’t think they’re that far apart.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he’d been to three meetings Tuesday about immigration. “I know there’s a lot of skepticism around here and not much trust,” he said, “but I do believe that there is a bona fide bipartisan concern about getting this done.”
Even if the Senate can come up with the votes to pass a plan, Democrats fear there is little chance such a bill would gain the support of House Republicans.
“There were no commitments made in the House” as legislators worked to end the government shutdown, House GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana said Monday, warning against any “amnesty” measure.
Trump weighed in Tuesday via Twitter: “Nobody knows for sure that the Republicans & Democrats will be able to reach a deal on DACA by February 8, but everyone will be trying….with a big additional focus put on Military Strength and Border Security. The Dems have just learned that a Shutdown is not the answer!”
Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Schumer had promised a $25 billion figure for the wall and other border security measures, though not all of that would have been immediate funding. He called Schumer’s withdrawal
of the offer “a step backward.”
He said a border-security plan will need more than a one-year appropriation in exchange for protecting young aliens from deportation.
“We need a plan and we need the funding to pay for the plan as part of this negotiation,” Cornyn said. “It’s got to be a whole system of infrastructure, people and technology.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has committed to trying to reach a deal on immigration and key budget issues by Feb. 8, though Cornyn said Monday that “strikes me as highly difficult.”
Instead, the Senate appeared more likely to start a freewheeling debate next month.
“Whoever gets 60 votes wins,” said McConnell.
Still, Schumer said Monday’s agreement to end the three-day government shutdown provided a “glimmer of hope” for renewed talks.
White House congressional liaison Marc Short said Tuesday that bipartisan talks on immigration had restarted. Sen. Lindsey Graham said members of a bipartisan group will present ideas to top party members in the coming days.
It remained unclear precisely who was taking the lead in the negotiating.
“If you had a tattoo for every group that’s forming, you’d have an arm full of them,” said Graham, R-S.C., who was working to bring together a new bipartisan group of senators to reach an agreement.
As Graham said Monday, there’s still no clear path in the Senate to getting the 60 votes needed to advance any immigration bill.
“There’s a play being made by the White House to pick up 48 Republicans and 12 Democrats. That ain’t gonna work. I’ve seen that play a bunch. That gets you nothing,” Graham said. “There’s a play by Democrats to pick up 12 of us. That ain’t gonna work. We’ve got about five or six for my proposal, but you’re not going to get 12.”
“So the only way you’re ever going to get something out of the Senate that has the chance to get on the president’s desk is to make it close to 70 votes,” he added.
One result of the three-day standoff was that it crystallized which Senate moderates were most interested in a deal — and it got them talking. A bipartisan group of 22 senators met multiple times, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine leading discussions about where they might find agreement.
“If we had not taken this cause for two days, I don’t think we would have had this commitment from the group of senators plus the majority leader to move forward in three weeks,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
But it’s not at all clear that these new conversations will budge Republican leaders or Trump.
What Trump will support regarding Dreamers “depends on what we get in exchange,” White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told CNN on Tuesday. “What do we get for border security? What do we get for the wall?”
The retreat by Democrats ended the three-day government shutdown but roiled immigration activists, who blasted Democrats for caving to Republicans with nothing gained by the promise of a Senate vote.
“Once again, Dreamers are left behind,” said Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y. The term Dreamer is based on the never-passed DREAM Act, or Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, that would have given protections similar to those provided by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that was implemented during President Barack Obama’s tenure.
Trump last year announced that he was ending DACA but gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a legislative fix.
With the clock ticking, Trump appeared to agree to a pair of deals with Democrats, then backed out and demanded more money for a
border wall.
Different factions have unveiled immigration proposals, ranging from a bipartisan plan by Graham and No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois — which Trump has rejected — to a proposal by two House GOP chairmen that features a wish list of hard-liners.
On the House side, the Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 150 lawmakers, announced its support for a bill written by Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas. Their plan would offer DACA recipients a three-year renewal of legal status, allowing them to continue to live and work in the country with no special path to citizenship. It also contains a host of stringent features that are anathema to Democrats, including reducing legal immigration by 25 percent, adding Border Patrol agents and denying certain funding to cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
The White House endorsed that bill, and it appeared to be gaining traction among conservatives. NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reduced immigration, announcing its support Tuesday.
Defining the Dreamer population — age, length of time in the U.S. and other qualifications — “is fungible,” said GOP Sen. David Perdue of Georgia. “But you want to make sure you’re not back here in five years, so you have to deal with border security, and you have to deal with the chain, so that the DACA population can’t come in and legally then sponsor their parents.”
Conservative Republicans insist on ending the ability of American citizens and green-card holders to sponsor siblings, parents or adult children for green cards, a
practice some call “chain” migration.
For some Democrats, that’s a bridge too far in the limited context of a DACA deal. They’re open to prohibiting the newly legalized population from sponsoring their relatives — but not restricting the sponsorship categories for citizens.
Another issue that threatens to gum up a deal is the status of the parents of newly legalized Dreamers and whether they would be allowed to stay.
The Graham-Durbin proposal would allow them to gain renewable three-year work permits, but not citizenship. Trump has rejected that compromise, and the White House cites a study that suggests millions of people could ultimately gain legal status as a result.
But Democrats aren’t keen on limiting family-sponsored immigration for anybody other than the DACA recipients. “We did include a provision related to family reunification, which breaks my heart,” Durbin said of his compromise bill. But outside the context of DACA recipients, he said he opposes restricting “legal immigration” to the country.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor, Jill Colvin, Luis Alonso Lugo and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Sahil Kapur, Laura Litvan, Steven T. Dennis, Toluse Olorunnipa and Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News.