Border-deal optimism grows
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump appears to be taking a more positive view of Capitol Hill talks on border security, according to negotiators who struck a distinctly optimistic tone after a White House meeting with a top Republican on the broad parameters of a potential bipartisan agreement.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama said Thursday’s session in the Oval Office was “the most positive meeting I’ve had in a long time” and that the president was “very reasonable.”
Down Pennsylvania Avenue at the Capitol, the mood among negotiators was distinctly upbeat, with participants in the talks between the Democratic-controlled House and Gop-held Senate predicting a deal could come as early as this weekend.
There’s a Feb. 15 deadline to enact the measure or a stopgap spending bill to avert another partial government shutdown that neither side wants. Trump had previously called the talks a “waste of time,” and he’s threatened to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and build a wall on the U.s.mexico border.
Publicly on Thursday, Trump took a wait-and-see approach.
“I certainly hear that they are working on something and both sides are moving along,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Any move by Trump to fund a border barrier by executive fiat, however, would roil many Republicans on Capitol Hill and certainly 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 on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Wednesday.
Mulvaney said the administration has identified more than $5.7 billion to transfer to wall construction, saying they would try to avoid legal obstacles.
In the congressional negotiations, it’s clear Trump won’t get anything close to the $5.7 billion he’s demanded for wall construction, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., will have to depart from her view that there shouldn’t be any wall funding at all.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO., a participant on the negotiating committee, said both sides are showing flexibility.
“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.”