Negotiations scheduled on raising borrowing cap
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders have arranged to meet with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney next week to explore an agreement to increase the government’s borrowing cap as well as legislation to stave off a severe round of cuts to agency budgets and the Pentagon.
A spokesman for Pelosi on Friday confirmed the meeting and said the two politically nettlesome items wouldn’t necessarily be paired together.
Both are among the few must-do items for Pelosi, D-calif., and her Senate GOP counterpart, Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky.
After attending President Donald Trump’s law enforcement speech in the Capitol on Thursday, Attorney General William Barr flew to El Salvador for meetings on the MS-13 street gang and illegal immigration. While in El Salvador, Barr also talked about the investigation into the origin of the Russia probe.
Barr toured a jail outside San Salvador — as a Fox News crew followed alongside — and held a news conference to tout collaboration between U.S. and Central American officials that led to the indictments of thousands of gang members “who otherwise might have reached the U.S.”
Barr said that funding under his authority for policing in Central America’s Northern Triangle is not at risk under the Trump administration’s promise to cut off those countries not doing enough to control migration.
He said he was so impressed with their cooperation against transnational criminal organizations that he decided to make the region his