Pressure mounts on GOP to end shutdown
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, Trump 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 Republicanheld 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, and Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Martha McSally of Arizona and David Perdue of Georgia.