Last-ditch effort to avert shutdown
Trump and Schumer meet ahead of midnight deadline; each party blames the other
President Donald Trump and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer met Friday afternoon in an 11th-hour effort to avert a government shutdown, with a bitterly divided Washington locked in stare-down over federal spending and legislation to protect some 700,000 younger immigrants from deportation.
The two New Yorkers, who pride themselves on their dealmaking abilities, emerged from the meeting at the White House without an agreement, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress continued to trade blame as the midnight deadline approached.
“We made some progress, but we still have a good number of disagreements,” Schumer told reporters upon returning to Capitol Hill.
As news of the Schumer meeting spread, the White House sought to reassure Republican congressional leaders that Trump would not make any major policy concessions, said a person familiar with the conversations but not authorized to be quoted by name.
Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas said Trump told Schumer to work things out with McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. “The ball is in Sen. Schumer’s court,” Cornyn said.
Democrats in the Senate have
served notice they will filibuster a four-week, government-wide funding bill that cleared the House Thursday evening. That could expose them to charges that they are responsible for a shutdown, but they point the finger at Republicans instead.
“They’re in charge,” Schumer said Friday as he entered his Capitol office. “They’re not talking to us. They’re totally paralyzed and inept. There’s no one to negotiate with.”
Republicans controlling the narrowly split chamber argue that it’s the
Democrats who are holding the government hostage over demands to protect “dreamer” immigrants brought to the country as children and now here illegally.
And the White House piled on, trying to paint the impending action as the “Schumer shutdown.” Still, officials said the president has been working the phones trying to avert one. The White House said Trump would not leave for a planned weekend trip to Florida if there was no agreement. The president had been set to leave Friday afternoon to attend a fundraiser at his Palm Beach estate marking the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.
The impact of the potential shutdown on the planned trip by Trump and much of his Cabinet to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week was still undetermined.
Trump entered the fray early Friday morning, mentioning the House-approved bill on Twitter, adding: “Democrats are needed if it is to pass in the Senate — but they want illegal immigration and weak borders. Shutdown coming? We need more Republican victories in 2018!”
Trump has given Congress until March 5 to save the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program protecting young immigrants, so “there is
absolutely no reason to tie those things together right now,” Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said at the White House.
On Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he hoped to vote on the House-passed bill “soon,” and he said Americans at home would be watching to see “which senators make the patriotic decision” and which “vote to shove aside veterans, military families and vulnerable children to hold the entire country hostage... until we pass an immigration bill.” A Senate GOP aide said McConnell was not attending the White House meeting because Trump had only issued the invitation to Schumer.