Shutdown looms amid clashes over immigration

Lawmakers facing Friday deadline debate ‘Dreamers,’ border wall.

Lawmakers clashed over immigration Tuesday, and a top House Democrat refused to guarantee Democratic votes to keep the government open, ratcheting up chances for a shutdown at week’s end.

“We don’t want to shut down the government, we never want to,” House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters. “We want to keep the government open, but I will repeat, we’re not going to be held hostage to do things we think are contrary to the best interest of the American people.”

Hoyer declined to say definitively if Democrats would oppose a short-term spending bill Republicans are expected to offer ahead of Friday’s deadline for government funding to expire. But he said Democrats did not want to vote in favor of a fourth shortterm bill that continues existing agency spending levels, absent an agreement for a broader two-year

funding deal and a solution for immigrant youths.

A deal on “Dreamers” looked even more remote as senators on the Judiciary Committee grilled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about the meeting last Thursday where President Donald Trump used an derogatory phrase to describe Haiti and African countries. She said she didn’t recall him uttering the phrase in question.

And in a new wrinkle that could only complicate talks further, the administration appeared to boost its demands for funding for Trump’s border wall. The administration recently made public a request for $18 billion over 10 years for the wall, which Democrats rejected with outrage.

But on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., suggested Trump asked for even more during last Thursday’s meeting, where Durbin and Nielsen both were present.

“Do you remember the president saying he wanted $20 billion now and he would build that wall within one year?” Durbin asked Nielsen.

“I do remember him saying that,” Nielsen replied. “I remember him asking is there any way to authorize the full down payment of the wall such that we could have assurances that we could in fact build it.”

According to a senior administration official, who demanded anonymity to speak freely, Trump wants Congress to fully authorize all of the wall money in exchange for a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That’s not a deal any Democrat would take given their opposition to Trump’s wall.

DACA was created by the Obama administration to grant work permits and short-term deportation relief to hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the country as kids, but Trump has announced he will end the program completely by early March absent congressional action.

Aides to key negotiators from both parties were meeting Tuesday in an effort to rekindle budget talks, setting up a meeting today of the leaders themselves. If they cannot agree, the government would shut down at midnight Friday.

House Republican leaders are scheduled to discuss their plans for a stopgap spending measure with rankand-file lawmakers Tuesday evening.

On Tuesday, Trump appeared to dig in over his demands for a “great wall.”

“We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country!” Trump tweeted.

There was frustration and uncertainty among some GOP congressional aides and lawmakers Tuesday over the state of the spending talks.

The discussions appeared to be headed in a positive direction until the president “dropped a grenade into the middle of everything,” said a second Senate GOP aide, also granted anonymity to speak candidly. The aide voiced uncertainty about how the talks would proceed in the coming days.

There is also annoyance at the prospect of having to pursue yet another stopgap funding bill that would punt the budget talks deeper into the year.

But Republicans moved to pin blame on Democrats for a potential shutdown. “For several years now, Democrats have blasted us for trying to extract policy goals when funding the government, and now they’re doing the same thing,” a House GOP aide said.

Echoing many other Republican lawmakers, Sen. Rand Paul, Ky., said on the Fox News Channel that the immigration debate should be resolved separately from the spending talks.

“That’s a question: Will the Democrats hold up spending and funding of the government over this issue?” Paul said.

Senior Democratic aides said they would be waiting for cues from Republicans about what to expect next and repeated what they have said for months: Republicans have total control of Washington and should be able to advance short-term spending agreements easily out of the House. In the Senate, they said Democratic priorities must be met if they expect support for a shortterm plan.

Thirty-two Senate Democrats voted against the last short-term spending plan, and progressive and immigrant rights groups are pressuring the remainder to oppose any must-pass bill that fails to protect Dreamers.

Some Democrats say they feel emboldened now that a bipartisan group of senators reached a deal they believe could prevail in the closely divided Senate. Durbin spent the weekend contacting fellow Democrats to build support for the deal struck with Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, S.C., and Jeff Flake, Ariz., according to an aide familiar with his outreach.

“We’ve shown a willingness to do the right thing, and we’ve shown a willingness to work in a bipartisan fashion,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. “The problems are on the Republican side.”

But praise for the deal was not universal among Democrats. Hoyer suggested House Democrats would have trouble signing on to the accord, saying that the issues of family migration and a diversity lottery visa from low-immigration countries should be dealt with separately.

Across the country over the weekend, Democrats continued harping on Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office and said they would draw a hard line against the president’s policies.

In Boston on Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., used a speech at an event marking the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to tell the crowd, “We face the challenge of an openly racist president of the United States,” according to local news reports. In Michigan, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., called Trump’s comments “terrible” and “divisive.”

And Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaking at a breakfast kicking off a holiday parade in Los Angeles, suggested that Trump was “politically profiting off of sowing hate and division in our country.

“We know these are dark times that require us to fight and march and resist,” she added.