The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shutdown begins, but talks go on
Parts of government close as lawmakers debate border funding.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s decision to reject a bipartisan spending bill and ask $5.7 billion for the construction of a wall along the Mexico border led large parts of the federal government to shut down today, testing the political wills of Democrats and Republicans in the final days of 2018.
The White House and congressional leaders continued negotiations late Friday, but most House lawmakers were sent home before 7 p.m., making it impossible for them to vote on any agreement until today. Funding for numerous agencies, including those that operate parks, homeland security, law enforcement, and transporta- tion, expired at midnight.
It’s unclear how long a shutdown might last. Trump predicted earlier Friday that it could drag on for a “very long time.”
The breakdown marked the most dramatic consequence of Washington’s new political dynamic. Trump saw the showdown over a wall as a necessary fight in order to try and deliver one of his core campaign promises.
Democrats, buttressed by big wins in the November midterm
elections, have unified and are seeking to thwart his agenda. They have warned that his erratic, and at times impulsive, demands are unsettling financial markets, foreign allies, and even members of his own cabinet.
The Senate narrowly passed a procedural vote in the evening the Republican and Democratic leaders said preserved the possibility of a compromise, though no agreement has yet been reached.
Spending for a number of federal agencies, impacting hundreds of thousands of federal employees, expired at midnight. But negotiations remained extremely fluid, and it was unclear if any spending measure would be able to resolve intense disagreements about whether to fund 215 miles of wall along the Mexico border.
“I hope Senate Democrats will work with the White House on an agreement that can pass both houses of Congress and then receive the president’s signature,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told other lawmakers after the vote passed 48-47, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats were open to discussions with the White House and Republicans, but would not agree to any measure that funded the new construction of a border wall.
The talks could prove to be the final legislative effort before funding lapses at midnight. Other federal agencies would not be impacted, including the Pentagon, because their budgets were approved earlier in the year. But a number of other agencies, including those that oversee homeland security, law enforcement, tax collection, and transportation, would have to halt certain operations.
Trump and Schumer had dug in after the president reversed course Thursday morning and renewed his demand for taxpayer money to build the wall. But there were signs of a late thaw on Friday, when McConnell, Democrats, and Vice President Mike Pence began huddling separately in the Capitol.
Pence separately joined Trump adviser Jared Kushner and White House budget Director Mick Mulvaney for a meeting with House conservatives.
The construction of a wall along the Mexico border was one of Trump’s top campaign promises in 2016, and he had promised that Mexico would finance the entire project. But since taking office, he has demanded the money come from Congress, and Senate Democrats have easily blocked every attempt.
“We’re going to be working very hard to get something passed in the Senate,” Trump said earlier Friday in the Oval Office. “Now it’s up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown tonight. I hope we don’t but we’ve very much prepared for a long shutdown.”
The negotiations followed a near-miss earlier this week when lawmakers thought they had a deal to avert a shutdown.
On Wednesday night, the Senate unanimously passed a short-term spending bill to keep the government running through Feb. 8 while denying Trump his wall money.
Lawmakers had expected Trump to sign that measure — especially after he asserted he could find other ways to fund his wall. But the president abruptly changed his mind in the face of a vicious backlash from conservative lawmakers and commentators.
It appeared a Senate bill containing the wall funding wouldn’t even advance past an initial procedural hurdle — and even if it did so, the 60 votes needed for final passage were out of reach.
Nonetheless, the procedural vote took on the air of a cliff-hanger Friday as senators of both parties waited and watched to see if it could obtain the majority vote needed to advance in a Senate split 51-49 between Republicans and Democrats. Failure of the procedural motion would kill the legislation on the spot — and if that happened it would be because of defections from lawmakers of the president’s own party.
Tension hung over the Capitol, four days before Christmas, with a partial government shutdown hours away, and Republicans in their last gasp of full control over Washington. As the GOP prepared to relinquish its majority in the House, the party was deeply divided, and partisan rifts with Democrats were growing ever more bitter.
In other tweets Friday, Trump urged McConnell to “fight for the Wall and Border Security as hard as he fought for anything.”
Trump also urged McConnell to “use the Nuclear Option and get it done!”
That was a reference to a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. Trump was advocating that McConnell change the rule so that only 51 votes are required. By doing that, Republicans would be able to pass a bill without Democratic cooperation in a chamber in which Republicans hold 51 seats.
But a McConnell spokesman soon put out a statement making clear that wouldn’t happen.
“The Leader has said for years that the votes are not there in the Conference to use the nuclear option,” said McConnell spokesman David Popp. “Just this morning, several Senators put out statements confirming that there is not a majority in the conference to go down that road.”
For more than a year, Trump has tried to pressure McConnell to change Senate rules in a way that would allow the chamber to pass legislation with a simple majority.
During the Obama administration, when Democrats controlled the Senate, Democrats changed the rules to allow most presidential nominees to advance with a simple majority of votes. During the beginning of the Trump administration, McConnell extended this practice to the nomination of Supreme Court justices, which proved crucial because both of Trump’s nominees to the nation’s highest court won approval by a narrow margin.
But McConnell has resisted such a change for legislation, as have a number of other Republicans, worried about the precedent it would set.
In his tweets, Trump also sought to counter Democratic arguments that a border wall is an antiquated strategy for curbing illegal border crossings.
“The Democrats are trying to belittle the concept of a Wall, calling it old fashioned,” Trump wrote. “The fact is there is nothing else’s that will work, and that has been true for thousands of years. It’s like the wheel, there is nothing better.”
“Properly designed and built Walls work, and the Democrats are lying when they say they don’t,” the president added.