The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
FIGHT OVER WALL FUNDS MAY SPARK SHUTDOWN
House adds money at president’s request; Senate unlikely to agree.
WASHINGTON — A deal to avert a Christmastime government shutdown teetered Thursday after President Donald Trump told House Republican leaders he would not sign a stopgap spending bill to keep funds flowing past midnight today if it does not include border-wall funding.
“We protect nations all over the world, but Democrats are unwilling to protect our nation,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, after Trump met with House Republicans. “We urgently need funding for border security and that includes a wall.”
Late Thursday, the House approved a package with his $5.7 billion request that is almost certain to be rejected by the Senate.
Earlier, House Republicans had emerged from a conference meeting without a guarantee from the leadership the president would support a Senate bill approved the day before that did not contain border wall money.
The Senate bill would extend the government funding for nine federal departments and several federal agencies into early February. An emergency meeting at
the White House appears to have confirmed those fears.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the president cited “legitimate concerns for border security” as a reason not to sign the spending bill.
“We want to keep the government open, but we also want to see an agreement that protects the border,” Ryan said. “We have very serious concerns about securing our border.”
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the majority whip, told reporters House Republicans would add $5.7 billion in border wall funding to the Senate bill, which they did later. They also added disaster relief money for those affected by storms and natural disasters as a way to lure Democratic support, though Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said Thursday any wall funding would be an automatic “nonstarter.”
The House voted largely along party lines, 217-185, after GOP leaders framed the vote as a slap-back to Pelosi, who had warned Trump in a televised Oval Office meeting last week that he wouldn’t have the votes for the wall.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned senators they may need to return to Washington for a noontime vote today.
The most likely possibility is that the Senate strips the border wall out of the bill but keeps the disaster funds and sends it back to the House. House lawmakers said they were being told to stay in town for more possible votes.
The chaos in Washington on Thursday helped send stock prices plummeting while economic uncertainty rose. On the edge of one of the biggest travel weekends of the year, the Transportation Security Administration and air traffic control system were about to run out of money, though most of their employees would have to work without pay. Visitors to the national parks were forced to rethink travel plans.
“This is no way to run the corner grocery store, let alone the government of the United States,” said Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich.
The spending bill passed the Senate in a voice vote late Wednesday night but does not include funds demanded by Trump for a wall at the southern border. “At this moment, the president does not want to go further without border security, which includes steel slats or a wall,” Sanders said.
Though Trump has not publicly expressed an intent to sign or veto the bill, he told Ryan he would not sign the Senate bill, Ryan said. The president was facing a fierce repudiation from the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and his supporters over a perceived retreat from his signature campaign promise.
Trump, after a phone call with Ryan, indicated on Twitter he was frustrated with the limitations of the stopgap spending bill, which both Democratic leaders endorsed. He indicated that Republican leaders had promised the next spending bill to reach his desk would fund the border wall.
“When I begrudgingly signed the Omnibus Bill, I was promised the Wall ... and Border Security by leadership,” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the $1.3 trillion spending bill he angrily signed in March. “Would be done by end of year (NOW). It didn’t happen!”
Ann Coulter, a political commentator, was one of multiple conservative supporters warning the president would jeopardize his re-election prospects if he failed to secure wall funding. The hashtag “BuildTheWallOrGOPWillFall” circulated among a number of conservative Twitter accounts.
“On the basis of his self-interest alone, he must know that if he doesn’t build the wall, he has zero chance of being re-elected and a 100 percent chance of being utterly humiliated,” Coulter wrote in a blog post Wednesday night.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, used a football analogy on Fox News on Thursday morning. “It’s not a punt. A punt actually helps” the team, he said. “This is a fumble, and we need to make sure the president stays firm.”
It was a final deluge of congressional chaos, with the House Republican leadership struggling to counter concerns they were squandering the last moments of a Republican majority — a defeated caucus whose members have neglected to show up for votes this week.
“It makes it a lot more difficult,” Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., who was defeated in his November re-election bid, said of the dozens of missing members. “There’s a fear if a majority of Republicans don’t support it, the president would be less likely to support it.”
Ryan, a day after he offered a defense of his congressional legacy and lamented the “broken” state of American politics, had been set to argue the best solution was to keep the government fully funded and accept the political loss.
Punting the impasse over wall funding until after the State of the Union address expected next month could give Trump the opportunity to showcase his argument for a border wall to the American people, some lawmakers said.
But it would put control of the fight in the hands of Pelosi, the likely successor to the speaker’s gavel.
“I think the question people are asking is: When is it better to have the fight? And is it better to have the fight on our own terms or is it better to have the fight on Nancy Pelosi’s terms?” said Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.