Trump urged to alter tactics
Graham suggests he reopen government while still negotiating
Washington — Twenty-four days into the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and with the White House and House Democrats no closer to a deal, pressure is ramping up on Senate Republicans to craft an exit plan that will get federal employees back to work and pull their party out of a deepening political quagmire.
In a sign that Republicans are increasingly concerned that the standoff over President Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall is hurting their party, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., suggested temporarily reopening the government while continuing negotiations. If talks don’t bear fruit, Graham said Sunday, the president could consider following through on his threat to bypass Congress and build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border by declaring a national emergency.
“I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three weeks, before he pulls the plug,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.” “See if we can get a deal. If we can’t at the end of three weeks, all bets are off. See if he can do it by himself through the emergency powers.”
The maneuvering by a key Trump ally highlights the difficult balancing act Senate Republicans will probably face over the next two years, trapped between a mercurial GOP president and an emboldened new House Democratic majority.
The two sides remained far apart Sunday. Tweeting from the White House as the capital was blanketed by snow for the first time this year, Trump continued to point the finger at Democrats, who he said were “everywhere but Washington as people await their pay.”
At the same time, Democrats ramped up calls for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to take up House-passed legislation to fund the government, regardless of whether the president agrees. McConnell, whose office insists it’s up to Democrats to make a deal, has taken a low public profile as the stalemate drags on, seemingly wary of being burned once again by Trump after the president did an abrupt about-face last month and opposed a temporary funding bill that had cleared the Senate.
So far, three Republican senators — Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine, both running for re-election in states Trump lost in 2016; and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have called for an immediate end to the partial shutdown even without the more than $5 billion Trump has demanded for the wall. The impasse left about 800,000 federal workers without a paycheck Friday, when lawmakers were back in their states.
If other senators begin feeling the heat from constituents, they could force McConnell’s hand, Republican strategist Doug Heye said. “If he has, like, three more Republican senators — whoever they may be — calling for something to be done, then that changes the calculus,” he said. “But until that happens, there is no political motivation for McConnell.”
Twenty-two Senate Republicans, including McConnell, are up for re-election in 2020, compared with 12 Senate Democrats. But the majority of the Republican-held seats are in solid red states, where the greatest fear for GOP incumbents is a primary challenge from the right. Only a handful of Republicans are in potentially competitive races, including Collins, Gardner, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Martha McSally of Arizona and David Perdue of Georgia.
Public opinion could increase the pressure. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday said that more Americans blame Trump and Republicans in Congress for the shutdown than congressional Democrats. Fifty-three percent of respondents blame the president and Republicans, while 29 percent blame Democrats. Thirteen percent blame both equally. More Americans remain opposed to the idea of a border wall than support it, the poll found, although the margin has narrowed over the past year.
Senate Democrats are seizing the opportunity to pressure their Republican colleagues. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, said moderate Republicans who sought to broker a deal last week should step forward and make an appeal to McConnell.
“It’s time for those centrists to speak up in their own Republican Senate caucus and tell Mitch McConnell, ‘The party’s over. We want this to end, there’s no excuse for the shutdown,’” Durbin said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” He added that “once the president realizes he’s lost the Senate Republicans, we can roll up our sleeves, open the government and get down to business.”
Another Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, raised the prospect of the Senate banding together to bypass the president and force the funding bills through. Manchin, who represents a state Trump won by more than 40 points, said in a statement Sunday that given Trump’s suggestion late last week that he does not immediately plan to issue an emergency declaration, “it’s time for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up the Housepassed appropriations bills that would finally reopen government.”
“As an equal branch of government we have the authority to override the President’s veto, if that’s what he chooses to do,” Manchin said.
Yet McConnell’s office reiterated that it is up to Democrats to reach an agreement with the president. In a statement, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart also noted that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has stipulated that any funding bill must have the support of both parties’ leaders and the president before it is brought up for a vote in the chamber.
“What isn’t happening, though, is Democrats demanding that their leadership get back in the room and negotiate,” Stewart said. “Once Democrats can reach an agreement with the president, the Senate can act on that.”
One of the few constants in the shutdown negotiations has been the president’s shifting, and Sunday was no exception.
In a tweet, the president complained that Democrats are “saying that DACA is not worth it,” referring to protections for “Dreamers” who were brought to the country as children and have stayed illegally.
But last week, Trump shot down a deal floated by Senate Republicans that would have included those protections, and he has repeatedly said he plans to wait until the Supreme Court rules on the matter before seeking to negotiate with Democrats on it.
Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., on Sunday took aim at the president’s vacillations, which he said made him “feel like I signed up for the ‘Trump of the Day Club.’”
“I don’t know what position we’re going to get on a negotiation from Day One to Day Two,” Coons said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Coons also suggested that’s why McConnell has not taken a more active role in negotiations. While McConnell has been part of the process, he was not present outside the White House last week after talks between Trump and congressional leaders collapsed. “Why is Mitch McConnell completely absent from these negotiations?” Coons asked. “It’s because he doesn’t really know what the president will accept.”
As both sides jousted, the impact of the shutdown continued to reverberate across the federal government.
The Transportation Security Administration, for instance, said there was a significant increase in the number of airport checkpoint personnel not reporting for duty. The rate of unscheduled absences Saturday jumped by 37.5 percent, with 7.7 percent of the 51,000 workforce not reporting for duty. That compared with a 3.2 percent absentee rate on Jan. 14 of last year, when there wasn’t a shutdown.
On Sunday, the TSA closed its checkpoint in Terminal B of Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston because of staffing issues associated with the shutdown, The Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, Miami International Airport officials said they will reopen a terminal today that was closed for parts of the weekend because of a staffing shortage caused by the shutdown, the AP reported.
Although the TSA said it was consolidating efforts where necessary, a spokesman pointed out that virtually all passengers who flew Saturday cleared through checkpoints in less than the TSA’s 30-minute standard. “Security standards remain uncompromised at our nation’s airports,” said spokesman Jim Gregory. But the people who man TSA checkpoints are among the lowest-paid federal employees, and their union, the American Federation of Government Employees, has voiced concern that its members may not be able to report to work if their pay stops.