Trump ‘not happy’ with deal
President weighs options to finance wall, doesn’t say if he’ll sign compromise bill
WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that he was “not happy” about the bipartisan border security compromise negotiated by congressional leaders, but gave no indication whether he would sign or veto it before another government shutdown hits at midnight Friday.
In his first comments since learning details of the deal, Trump said he would have to study it more before deciding what to do. The compromise includes just $1.375 billion for new fencing along the border, far short of the $5.7 billion he demanded for a wall — and less even than the deal that he rejected in December, triggering a 35day partial govern- ment shutdown.
“Am I happy at first glance?” he said, responding to reporters at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting. “I just got to see it. The answer is no, I’m not. I’m not happy.”
But he said he was “using other methods” to build the wall and played down the chances of having to close government doors again. “I don’t think you’re going to see a shutdown,” he said.
The measure, brokered by senior members of both parties from both chambers of Congress on Monday night, will be taken up as early as today by the House, which is controlled by Democrats, followed by the Senate, which is run by Republicans.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, spoke with Trump by telephone Tuesday and urged him to accept the compromise.
“I hope he’ll sign it,” McConnell told reporters afterward. “I think he got a pretty good deal.” Notably, he did not rule out overriding a veto if Trump turned against the compromise.
Trump told reporters he was still thinking about declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress and finance wall construction on his own authority, a move that McConnell has warned him against and that would almost surely be challenged in court.
But Trump seemed to be setting the stage for eventually swallowing the compromise and avoiding an emergency declaration by emphasizing that he was already building the wall and was “moving things around” in the budget from “far less important areas” to finance it even without Congress.
“Right now, we’re building a lot of wall,” he said. “And you think it’s easy? We’re building in the face of tremendous obstruction and tremendous opposition.”
In fact, no new walls have been built or financed by Congress based on the prototypes that the Trump administration unveiled in October
2017. Projects to replace or repair about 40 miles of existing barriers have been started or completed since 2017.
Construction of the first extension of the current barriers, 14 miles of a levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley sector, is slated to begin this month, but a butterfly center has asked a judge to block the construction as the barrier would bisect its property.
In an attempt to appease Trump, Republicans repeatedly referred to the deal as a “big down payment” on
his wall and softened on the notion of transferring funding within the government to build more barriers. McConnell said he had no objection to the president using whatever “tools” were available, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., offered a specific proposal: the use of $800 million in drug interdiction funding to shore up border security in areas used by narcotics traffickers.
In his remarks Tuesday, Trump flip-flopped again on taking responsibility for the government shutdown that ended last month without any money for the wall. During the weeks leading up to the impasse that closed federal agencies, Trump said he would
be “proud to shut down the government for border security” and would not blame Democrats.
But during the shutdown, as 800,000 federal workers were caught in the middle without paychecks, he blamed Democrats after all, singling out their leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. “At this point it has become their, and the Democrats, fault!” he wrote on Twitter.
On Tuesday, he switched gears again and took responsibility.
“I accepted the first one and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished because people learned during that shutdown all about the
problems coming in from the southern border,” he said. “I accept it. I’ve always accepted it. But this one, I would never accept it if it happens, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. But this would be totally on the Democrats.”
The agreement includes a provision that could give the Trump administration broad discretion to increase the number of slots to shelter detained migrants, a win for Republicans that could ease the sting of Trump’s failure to secure full funding for his border wall.
On its face, Monday’s agreement, which still requires passage by both houses of Congress and approval
by the president, authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to fund about 40,000 detention “beds,” many of them in facilities run by for-profit companies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement itself near the border in Texas, Arizona and California.
In background briefings on the deal, House Democratic aides described the language as a “glide path” from the current level of 49,000 detention beds back down to Obama-era levels of 35,000 or lower.
But a summary of the provisions drafted by Republican staff members on the Senate Appropriations Committee presents a different picture, and one that could be a victory for the White House in an otherwise drab and wall-free deal. The document, provided by an aide to a senator who was reviewing the compromise, places the average number of beds funded under the deal at a much higher number — 45,274, including 2,500 slots for families.
Leaders in both parties anticipated that they would be able to overcome resistance from their flanks.
“Will everyone vote for it? No,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democratic on the Appropriations Committee. “Will a majority vote for it? Yes.”