Negotiators optimistic on border deal
Talks expected to go into weekend; Trump said to urge path to yes
WASHINGTON — The top Democrat and Republican working on a border-security deal said they’re nearing an accord but that negotiations are expected to go into the weekend, with a week left to pass a spending bill to avert another government shutdown.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby went to the White House on Thursday to discuss border security with President Donald Trump. The Republican senator said he updated the president on the negotiations of a House-Senate committee leading the talks. Shelby said he thinks a deal can be reached by Monday.
“The president urged me to get to yes,” Shelby said afterward. “He would like us to conclude our bill in a positive way for the American people.”
House Appropriations Chairman Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, who with Shelby is leading the talks, said Thursday that negotiators are acting in “good faith” but may not be able to finish work by today as she’d hoped.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had said an agreement would need to be reached by today to ensure legislation is passed by Feb. 15, when stopgap
● government funding expires. But lawmakers said a shutdown could still be averted if it takes a few days longer to reach a deal. Congress and Trump agreed to the temporary spending measure after a 35-day partial government shutdown resulting from a partisan impasse over wall funding.
On Thursday, Trump took a wait-and-see approach on negotiation progress.
“I certainly hear that they are working on something and both sides are moving along,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. We need border security. We have to have it, it’s not an option. Let’s see what happens.”
The White House is committed to letting the negotiations play out, with some saying they are “cautiously optimistic” about getting a deal they could live with, said a senior administration official who lacked authorization
to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Beyond the border-security negotiations, the measure is likely to contain seven appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign-aid budget, as well as disaster aid for victims of last year’s hurricanes and Western wildfires.
“I’m hopeful,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “I do like the idea of getting all of last year’s work finished and I hope that’s where it ends up.”
Trump has mused for weeks about invoking emergency authority to bypass Congress for funds to build the wall. Shelby said he doesn’t know if Trump would consider declaring an emergency even if the panel reaches an agreement. “We can’t stop anybody from doing it,” he said, while adding there is a “positive attitude from the president to work this out.”
Any move by Trump to fund a border barrier by executive fiat, however, would
roil many Republicans on Capitol Hill, raising the likelihood that both House and Senate could pass legislation to reverse him. Trump could veto any such measure, but he’s also certain to face a challenge in the courts.
“If Congress won’t participate or won’t go along, we’ll figure out a way to do it with executive authority,” Acting White
House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s
Hannity.
Mulvaney said that the administration has identified well more than $5.7 billion to transfer to wall construction, saying they would try to avoid legal obstacles.
“Find the money that we can spend with the lowest threat of litigation, and then move from that pot of money to the next pot that maybe brings a little bit more threat of litigation,” Mulvaney said.
It’s clear that Trump won’t get the $5.7 billion he’s demanded for wall construction, just as Pelosi will have to depart from her view that
there shouldn’t be any wall funding at all.
Last year, a bipartisan Senate panel approved $1.6 billion for 65 miles of pedestrian fencing in Texas — in line with Trump’s official request. The negotiations aren’t likely to veer very far from that figure, aides involved in the talks said, and newly empowered House Democrats were looking to restrict use of the money.
A key negotiator, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said details on border wall issues haven’t been worked out. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., another participant, said both sides are showing flexibility, including Democrats who insisted during the recently-ended 35-day shutdown on no wall funding at all.
“They are not opposed to barriers,” Blunt said about Democrats. “And the president, I think, has embraced the idea that there may actually be something better than a concrete wall would have been anyway.”
The discussions are focusing on increased funds for border barriers, technology and agents, lawmakers have said.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a GOP negotiator on the panel, said lawmakers
are making progress.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” she said. “We don’t have it nailed down for sure, but I think everyone is remaining pretty positive.”
She said she thinks negotiations over a border barrier are “down to how much and where.”
Pelosi told reporters Thursday that she was hopeful of an agreement that would “protect our borders as we protect our values.”
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., another negotiator, acknowledged that Democrats could possibly lose votes on any final deal and that it’s “unrealistic” to think there would be no funding at all for any physical barriers.
“Like in any negotiation — if the Republicans and the White House are saying they need barriers, wall, whatever you want to call it, and that is an absolute objective, and we’re saying we want some other things — like in anything else, it’s a trade-off,” she said.