DOUBLE DARE YA , DON!
CONGRESS DEAL TO AVOID 2ND SHUTDOWN HAS NO WALL CASH
Congressional negotiators on Monday night reached a bipartisan spending deal to avert another government shutdown — and it doesn’t earmark one dime for the construction of President Trump’s long-promised border wall with Mexico, said sources familiar with the matter.
The breakthrough puts immense pressure on the President, who has insisted he won’t sign any budget that doesn’t earmark at least $5.7 billion for his coveted border barrier — a stubborn demand that in December resulted in a record 35-day federal shutdown that stretched to Jan. 25.
Sen Richard Shelby (RAla.) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-Westchester) announced the deal after a closed-door meeting between lawmakers on a bipartisan conference committee, which has been tasked with hashing out a full-year spending plan before a large chunk of the government runs out of money again on Friday.
The lawmakers wouldn’t divulge details of the deal, only saying it had been reached “in principle.”
But a Democratic congressional aide told the Daily News that the committee has agreed to tuck away $1.375 billion for the construction of 55 miles of “bollard fencing” — “no wall,” said the aide — while reducing the number of detention beds at the disposal of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by 17.4%, from 49,057 to 40,520.
The reduction in detencheck tion beds puts “a critical on the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy that is tearing communities apart,” the aide said.
The decrease in beds was sought by Democrats, who argue it will force ICE to focus on deporting criminals and people who pose a security threat instead of “lawabiding immigrants who are contributing to our country,” as Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) put it Sunday.
Democrats had initially requested that ICE only be given capacity to house 16,500 detained immigrants per day — but they dropped that demand amid firm Republican opposition.
Lowey and Shelby pledged to promptly deliver the specifics of the bill so it can be voted by the Senate and House this week and reach Trump’s desk ahead of the Friday shutdown deadline.
The so-called border bollards that Dems agreed to bankroll closely resemble in design the “steel slats” Trump has interchangeably hyped in recent weeks.
However, the $1.3 billion in bollard cash is drastically short of the $5.7 billion sum Trump has demanded for the border project he once promised Mexico would pay for.
The bollards are also nothing new, according to a second congressional aide.
“These are the same type of barriers that were built before Trump took office,” this source told The News.
But another senior aide had a different take and said the deal will bankroll “double the amount” of border barriers than was constructed last year.
“All of the miles will be in
the Rio Grande Valley sector — Border Patrol’s highest priorities on its strategic plan,” the aide said.
The official also said the funding for ICE ensures the agency can “maintain its current detention population and respond to surges in apprehensions.”
At a rally in El Paso, Texas on Monday night, Trump didn’t appear upbeat about the budget deal.
“I don’t even want to hear about it,” Trump said at the campaign-style event. “I don’t want to hear about it. So I don’t know what they mean, ‘progress is being made.’”
The President repeated his threat to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and allocate cash for his wall from the Pentagon budget.
“We are setting the stage,” he said. “We are setting the table. We are doing whatever we have to do. The wall is being built.”
Legal experts argue an emergency declaration would all but certainly be struck down in court, as Trump has undermined his own sense of urgency by dragging the issue out for weeks.
Trump gave no clear indication whether he would sign off on the new bipartisan agreement.
Meanwhile, in a rival rally in the same town, Beto O’Rourke — the Democrat who unsuccessfully vied for Sen. Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in the midterm election — railed against Trump’s border wall obsession and sympathized with undocumented immigrants seeking better lives in the U.S.
“We will not believe that walls can or should keep them out,” O’Rourke said, his voice cracking. “Instead, we welcome them with open arms. The wealthiest, the most powerful country on the face of the planet can meet this moment in our obligations for one another and be all the stronger for it.”
The last shutdown left 800,000 federal workers without paychecks for 35 days and disrupted everything from FBI counterintelligence investigations and airport security to national parks and food inspections.
The new spending package would be a major defeat for Trump in the eyes of his most conservative constituents, who demand that he get full funding for the wall. Trump rejected a deal last year that would have put up $1.6 billion for barrier construction — $300 million more than the deal reached Monday. With Kate Feldman