Trump advocates for government shutdown, outlawing filibusters

Short-term spending bill passage prompting president’s threats

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for a government shutdown later this year and suggested the Senate might need to prohibit future filibusters, threatening to fracture Washington's basic underpinnings to make progress on his legislative goals.

His latest outbursts — no sitting president has called for the government to be shut down like this — could cast a shadow over how Congress approaches numerous bills this year. Trump wants Congress to overhaul the tax code, approve a $1 trillion infrastructure package, and raise or suspend the debt ceiling before the government begins falling behind on its obligations.

He has made little legislative progress in any of these areas, and he is on the verge of being dealt another stinging defeat as House Republicans splinter on a health care bill for the second time in recent weeks. Trump's new threats suggest he will jettison attempts at compromise and instead use the bombastic partisan warfare he employed during his campaign.

The threats come after White House officials said they were furious at what they viewed as gloating by Democrats over the terms of a short-term spending bill that funds government operations through Sept. 30. In morning Twitter posts, Trump said he had to make concessions because Senate rules require 60 votes to pass legislation and Republicans control only 52 seats in the 100-seat chamber.

He wrote that Republicans needed to pick up more seats in the 2018 midterm elections or consider changing filibuster rules so that the Senate's minority party cannot block bills.

"Our country needs a good 'shutdown' in September to fix mess!" he wrote.

Trump could easily trigger a partial government shutdown in October, by directing Republicans not to negotiate with Democrats or by refusing to sign a spending bill that Congress sends him for approval.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that Congress needs to return to the practice of passing one-year appropriations bills and sending them to the White House for approval, not continuing the recent practice of lurching from one stopgap spending bill to the next.

"This is a change-agent president, and he's going to change Washington, D.C.," Mulvaney said. "And if it takes a shutdown, that's what it's going to take."

Mulvaney added, though, that a shutdown was not "desirable," seeming to break with the president.

Mulvaney plans to release a full-scale budget in mid-May that is supposed to help lawmakers craft their 2018 budgets. He said he wants work on those spending bills to begin immediately.

Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University, said Trump's threat of a shutdown was "totally, totally, totally" unprecedented.