Trump to “keep government open,” backs off border wall
WA S HI N G TON» President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday that he would not allow the government to partially shut down next week, backing down from his demand that Congress appropriate billions of dollars for new construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Keeping the government open after Sunday would require Trump to sign a bipartisan spending bill from Congress, something he had resisted committing to for weeks. But Wednesday, with anxiety building on Capitol Hill, he suggested that he planned to acquiesce.
The bill would fund the military and some other government programs through September 2019 and other government operations through Dec. 7. The House passed the legislation 36161 on Wednesday and sent it to Trump.
“We’ll keep the government open. We’re going to keep the government open,” the president told reporters during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York.
The bill passed Wednesday punts the fight over border wall spending until after the midterm elections, keeping the Department of Homeland Security and some other agencies running at current spending levels through early December.
It contains big spending increases for the Pentagon and the Health and Human Services department for 2019. The defense spending is a win for Trump and congressional Republicans, but without the border wall money Trump wanted, his support for the spending package had been in doubt.
His comments Wednesday came after he repeatedly teased the idea of a shutdown, at times suggesting he would not let government funding expire and at other times suggesting he was open to a shutdown.
Trump called the legislation “ridiculous” in a tweet last week, and demanded to know where his wall money was. Trump repeatedly promised during his campaign that the wall would be paid for by Mexico, but he has recently sought $5 billion from Congress to extend construction of the wall.
Trump had previously suggested it could be good politics to shut down the government to fight for his border wall, but congressional GOP leaders believe it would be a political disaster that would achieve no result.
The legislation passed the Senate last week and drew wide bipartisan support in both chambers, despite complaints from some conservatives who object to high domestic spending levels and the absence of conservative policy priorities such as a provision blocking funding for Planned Parenthood.
Trump’s commitment to sign the new legislation only postpones a fight over money for the border wall. Some conservatives questioned whether they would be in any better position to get Trump’s wall money after the midterm elections. It’s unclear that there is any strategy for extracting the money from Congress at that point, as Senate Democrats would have to go along with any such plan.