Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump sticks to guns: Wall or long shutdown
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told Democratic congressional leaders that the partial government shutdown may last for years, insisting Friday he won’t budge on funding for a longer wall between the United States and Mexico.
At a news conference after the White House meeting, Trump raised the possibility that he’ll unilaterally move forward with the project, invoking his emergency powers to bypass the opposition.
“We can do it. I haven’t done it. I may do it. I may do it,” he told reporters during a question-and-answer session. “We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly. That’s another way of doing it. But if we can do it through a negotiated process, we’re giving that a shot.”
The president said he felt Friday’s meeting was productive, but Democratic congressional leaders described it as contentious and accomplishing little.
Trump, at the news conference, insisted the United States is vulnerable to terrorists, criminals and gang members who are crossing
from Mexico into the United States. “The southern border is a dangerous, horrible disaster,” Trump said. “We’re talking about national security. We’re not playing games,” he said. A better wall, built of steel perhaps, would make America safer, he said. It also would prevent deaths by lowering the number of people who make the dangerous trek north, he said. “We want to save lives. We want children to be safe. … We can’t let them die on the way up,” Trump said. Women are also at risk, he said. “If they know it’s not going to take place because they can’t get through because we have a great border wall or fence or barrier, they’re not going to come up and you’re not going to have the problem.” Mexico will pay for the wall, at least indirectly, because the North American Free Trade Agreement has been redone, he said. The new trade deal, which his administration helped craft, will be a boon for the U.S. economy, he added. Stressing the need for legal immigration, Trump called for overhauling the nation’s existing system. “We need great people, but we want them to come in on a merit basis,” he said. “They can’t come in the way they’ve been coming in for years.” Trump’s call for immigration changes echoed what he had said in 2017 after Arkansas’ U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation to replace the existing system with a merit-based approach similar to those used in Australia and Canada. Cotton is a Republican from Dardanelle. At the time, Trump called Cotton’s proposal “the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century.” Cotton plans to introduce similar legislation in the 116th Congress. Trump said there was discussion during the meeting of marrying wall funding and protecting from deportation young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children who were previously covered by President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Trump has moved to rescind. The New York Times reported that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sounded open to the idea as he left for the White House. “We can find common ground,” McCarthy said. “DACA is a problem, border security is a problem and anything that can make sure that we can get everything together and move forward, I’m willing to discuss.” A compromise linking the younger immigrants to the wall has been floated by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. Trump also used the news conference to highlight the nation’s strong economy. Take-home pay is rising, he said. Job numbers are rising. Gas prices have fallen. Unemployment is low. So is inflation. The stock market, despite recent losses, is still up 30 percent since his election, Trump said. The president also spoke optimistically about Friday’s government shutdown meeting. Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, House Republican leaders and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, he described Friday’s shutdown-related meeting as “very, very productive,” adding, “I think we’ve come a long way.” “We’re all on the same path in terms of wanting to get government open,” he said. Pence said the dialogue had been “candid and constructive.”
WEEKEND MEETING
Congressional leadership staff members and White House representatives will meet this morning in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building “to work towards … an agreement that secures the border and opens the government,” a presidential spokesman said Friday evening. Speaking to reporters after exiting the West Wing, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats want to resume funding while the negotiations continue. “We made a plea to the president once again. Don’t hold millions of Americans, hundreds of thousands of workers hostage,” Schumer said. “We told the president we needed the government open. He resisted. In fact, he said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time. Months, or even years.” The Democratic leader indicated very little had been accomplished, but expressed a willingness to meet again. “We’ll continue discussing [this], of course, but it’s very hard to see how progress will be made unless they open up the government. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., portrayed the meeting as “lengthy and sometimes contentious.” “We agreed that we will continue our conversations,” she said. Allowing the shutdown to continue would be counterproductive, she said. “We recognize on the Democratic side that we really cannot resolve this until we open up government and we made that very clear to the president. Services are being withheld from the American people, paychecks are being withheld from people who serve the needs of the American people, and our border security will suffer if we do not resolve this issue,” she said. “We are committed to keeping our border safe. That has always been our principal to honor the oath of office that we take to protect and defend our country and our Constitution,” she said. “We can do that best when government is open. We’ve made that clear to the president.” Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has largely stayed on the sidelines, leaving it to Pelosi and Schumer to resolve the wall dispute with Trump. McConnell and his top deputy, Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., were not present when Trump and other Republican lawmakers appeared outside the White House after Friday’s meeting. Aides to McConnell insisted they were not aware of the news conference, The Washington Post reported. The shutdown, which enters its third week today, has left about 800,000 workers without pay, limited the functions of federal agencies and slowed the court system. There are also concerns that if the shutdown continues for several more weeks, it will harm the overall economy. Most Republicans in Congress have backed the president, though there were signs of a fraying alliance as two vulnerable senators from Democratic-leaning states, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine, expressed misgivings over their leaders’ intransigence. Gardner called on his party to end the shutdown, even if it meant not funding the wall, and Collins said she would support measures to fund the government in already approved appropriations bills.
MORE TROOPS SOUGHT
Separately, the Department of Homeland Security has asked the military to provide more help securing the U.S.-Mexico border, two defense officials told The Associated Press on Friday. The acting secretary of defense, Pat Shanahan, has not decided how to respond to the Homeland Security request, but in the past the Pentagon has provided help when asked. At one point last fall there were nearly 5,900 active-duty troops along the border in Texas, Arizona and California to assist border patrol agents and to erect wire barriers. That number now is about 2,350. The defense officials said the agency asked for certain military capabilities, not any number of troops. It will be up to Shanahan to decide whether more active-duty troops are dispatched. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the request for assistance has not yet been fully processed. One of the officials said the Homeland Security Department wants the military to put up concertina wire as barriers along 160 miles of border. That would be in addition to 70 miles of concertina wire that combat engineers put up in the fall. If the new work is taken on by the military, it might require an extension of the current deployment beyond its scheduled Jan. 31 end. The official said the department did not specifically ask for an extension, but it has not been ruled out. The troops have been erecting and reinforcing border barriers but are not performing law enforcement tasks or engaging with migrants. Some also have been providing transportation and logistical help as well as medical assistance to troops and to Customs and Border Protection personnel along the border. Many in Congress, including leading Democrats, have criticized the troop deployments as a waste of money and a misuse of military resources.
Information for this article was contributed by Seung Min Kim, Erica Werner, Josh Dawsey, Paul Kane, Anne Gearan, Lisa Rein, Ashley Halsey III, and Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post; by Michael Tackett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times; and by Robert Burns of The Associated Press.