Spending, DACA deals’ prospects dim

WASHINGTON — Prospects for a bipartisan agreement to protect young immigrants from deportation and prevent a government shutdown later this week faded Sunday as key lawmakers traded sharp accusations and President Donald Trump said hopes for a deal were “probably dead.”

Heading to dinner at his Palm Beach, Fla., golf club with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Trump said that on immigration “we have a lot of sticking points but they are all Democrat sticking points,” adding “they don’t want security at the border.”

Negotiators spent last week seeking a solution that would shield young immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, including the roughly 800,000 who secured work permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created under President Barack Obama.

But a tentative deal worked out Thursday by a small bipartisan group of senators crumbled in an Oval Office meeting in which, according to multiple people involved, an angry Trump asked them why the United States should accept more immigrants from Haiti and “shithole” African nations over those from European countries such as Norway.

Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga. — who attended the meeting and previously said they could not recall whether Trump had referred to “shithole countries” — on Sunday denied outright that Trump had ever said it. That prompted Democrats to accuse them of impugning a fellow senator’s credibility, a development that could

further poison the bipartisan talks.

“Both sides now are destroying the setting in which anything meaningful can happen,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Late Sunday, Trump denied making the statements attributed to him, but didn’t get into specifics about what he did or did not say.

“Did you see what various senators in the room said about my comments?” he asked. “They weren’t made.”

Earlier Sunday, Trump declared immigration talks to be failing.

“DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military,” he said on Twitter.

Democrats have tied the immigration talks to spending negotiations being held ahead of a Friday shutdown deadline. Republicans are seeking an increase in military spending; Democrats want a deferred-action program deal and a matching increase in nondefense funding.

The sole Democratic participant in the Oval Office meeting, Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois, told reporters Friday that Trump had used the vulgar word “not just once but repeatedly” during the meeting. A Republican attendee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, issued a statement that did not specifically confirm the words used but backed up Durbin’s account.

However, Perdue said in an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week that Trump did not use the word “shithole.”

“I’m telling you he did not use that word, George,” Perdue said, accusing Durbin of making a “gross misrepresentation” of what took place in the meeting: “It’s not the first time Senator Durbin has done it, and it is not productive to solving the problem we’re having.”

Cotton said much the same in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday: “I didn’t hear it, and I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was.”

Cotton and Perdue had previously issued a joint statement saying that they did “not recall the President saying these comments specifically.”

Both senators on Sunday pointed to a statement Durbin had made in 2013 about comments allegedly made by an unnamed GOP leader during a private White House meeting that were later denied by an Obama administration spokesman. “Senator Durbin has a history of misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings,” Cotton said.

Ben Marter, a spokesman for Durbin, tweeted a rebuke early Sunday: “Credibility is something that’s built by being consistently honest over time,” he said. “Senator Durbin has it. Senator Perdue does not. Ask anyone who’s dealt with both.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., forcefully backed Durbin, who has written a bill to grant young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and is the leading Democratic negotiator on the deferred-action program issue.

“To impugn [Durbin’s] integrity is disgraceful,” Schumer said. “Whether you agree with him on the issues or not, he is one of the most honorable members of the Senate.”

CONGRESS DIVIDED

The accounts of the meeting, however, have not fallen neatly along party lines.

Besides Graham’s endorsement of Durbin’s account, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Sunday on This Week that he had spoken to participants in the meeting immediately afterward — before The Washington Post publicly reported Trump’s use of the vulgar term.

“They said those words were used before those words went public,” Flake said.

Another participant, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, said in an interview with Fox News Sunday that she did not “recall him using that exact phrase,” but she acknowledged he “did use and will continue to use strong language.”

Host Chris Wallace told Nielsen it “seems implausible” that she would not recall that type of comment.

“I don’t recall that specific phrase being used,” she responded. “That’s all I can say about that.”

The comment has vexed Republicans, compelling many to make statements criticizing Trump for the remark. But it has infuriated Democrats who see the comment as evidence of malicious intent in Trump’s policymaking.

“I think he is a racist,” Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said on This Week. “We have to stand out; we have to speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., speaking Sunday on Meet the Press, said, “There’s no question what he said was racist. There’s no question what he said was un-American and completely unmoored from the facts.”

Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, the first black female Republican in Congress and the daughter of Haitian immigrants, also denounced Trump’s comments as bigoted and called on him to apologize. “I think that would show real leadership,” she said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

But Paul called those accusations unfair and, instead, accused the media of going “completely bonkers with just ad hominem [attacks] on the president,” blaming the potential failure of the talks on the outcry over Trump’s remarks.

“I do want to see an immigration compromise, and you can’t have an immigration compromise if everybody out there is calling the president a racist,” Paul told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd.

Trump addressed the issue briefly with reporters late Sunday.

Asked what he thinks about people who think he is prejudiced, Trump said, “No, No. I am not a racist.” He told reporters: “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. That I can tell you.”

IMMIGRATION SNAGS

While Democrats have expressed openness to a deal that would combine legal status for “dreamers,” as the group of young immigrants illegally brought as children are known, with funding for border security measures, Republicans have tried to broaden the talks. They have targeted the abolition of a special program allowing citizens of some countries to apply for visas distributed by lottery as well as rules allowing naturalized U.S. citizens to sponsor family members for legal status — a system Republican critics refer to as “chain migration.”

The tentative deal unveiled Thursday would give legal status and a pathway to citizenship for dreamers while also providing $2.7 billion for border security — some of which could be used to construct the border wall Trump has proposed. The visas now offered under the lottery system would be reallocated to other immigration programs, such as one offering temporary status to citizens of nations in crisis — like the ones Trump referred to in his Oval Office remarks.

Trump said in a second tweet Sunday that he wanted more aggressive measures in any deal: “I, as President, want people coming into our Country who are going to help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on MERIT. No more Lotteries!”

Echoing dozens of Democrats, Lewis said he would not vote for any government spending measure until the dreamer issue is settled.

Republicans cannot pass a government funding bill without Democratic votes. There are 51 Senate Republicans in a chamber in which 60 votes are needed to pass major legislation, and GOP leaders are also facing problems in the House, where some Republican members have balked at the prospect of passing another stopgap that does not increase military funding.

“We must not give up or give in,” Lewis said. “We must continue to press on and get a deal.”

A federal judge in California last week halted Trump’s decision to end the deferred-action program and ruled that participants in the program should retain their protected status. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said late Saturday that it would resume accepting renewal requests from people who had already enrolled in the program.

While Trump has criticized the judge’s order on Twitter, his administration has not yet appealed the decision but is expected to do so. Immigration advocates urged beneficiaries of the program to seek renewals quickly.

“The Trump administration stated that it plans to ‘vigorously’ challenge the district court’s decision. This means that the window of time available for sending in your DACA renewal is uncertain,” the National Immigration Law Center said in a release over social media, urging those eligible “to apply immediately.”

But there is little indication the ruling has helped to defuse the standoff, multiple Democratic aides involved in the effort to secure a compromise said Saturday. On Sunday, the situation’s urgency had not changed. Democrats are focused on securing a legislative solution to the crisis ahead of the Friday deadline.

Flake, who helped negotiate the deal that Trump rejected, said he was still hopeful it could provide the basis for a broad agreement.

“I think that when we get back into town, people will realize there’s only one deal in town,” he said. “There’s only one bipartisan bill, and we need 60 votes, and that bill will be presented with even more Republicans and Democrats than we have right now.”