Showdown looms as Trump wants funds
President Donald Trump and White House officials pressed congressional Republicans on Sunday to use the looming threat of a government shutdown to win funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump wants funding to be included in a spending measure that would keep the government open past April 28, a determined effort that has prompted a possible standoff with lawmakers in both parties, who hope to avert a federal closure.
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said in an interview Sunday with The Washington Post that the president and his advisers remain “strong” in their commitment to securing funding for border security and a wall.
“We want to get to a place this week where border-security money is being directed to the Department of Homeland Security so that we can begin surveillance and preliminary work, and then we will keep working on getting DHS what it needs for the structure,” he said.
The timing promises a week of high drama on the Hill. The Senate returns Monday night, and the House returns Tuesday from a two-week recess, leaving just three days when both chambers will be in session to wrangle out a funding agreement. Negotiators worked throughout the break, but thus far a deal has not been struck.
The wall, which experts say would cost $21.6 billion and take 3K years to construct, has emerged as a crucial sticking point for the White House, with the president insisting privately and publicly that progress toward its funding and eventual construction must be showcased this week.
“Congress is right to be nervous, but that’s Trump’s style to be aggressive, ambitious, right out of ‘The Art of the Deal,’ ” said William Bennett, a conservative commentator and close friend of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
In a tweet Sunday, Trump elbowed Democrats who have resisted his call to include wall funding. He chastised them for not wanting “money from the budget going to the border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs” and gang activity, in his view.
Trump added he would continue to ask Mexico to pay for the project, another bold proclamation he made during the campaign.
Democrats have insisted that they will not vote for any spending bill that gives the White House money or flexibility to begin construction of a border barrier. They believe that the GOP will have to either abandon Trump’s demand or assume political responsibility if a shutdown occurs.
“The burden to keep it open is on the Republicans,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Building a wall is not an answer. Not here or any place.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is among a group of prominent Senate Republicans who have said publicly that they hope to avoid a border wall fight this week.
“I think that’s a fight worth having and a conversation and a debate worth having for 2018,” Rubio said Sunday.” “If we can do some of that now, that would be great. But we cannot shut down the government right now.