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US shutdown continues, as Democrats pass bills that Trump won’t sign
If either of the two legislative measures “were presented to the President, his advisors would recommend that he veto the bill”, the White House said.
In a sign of how far apart Republicans and Democrats remained on the border wall funding, the White House has announced that President Donald Trump will even not sign the bills that the newly constituted Democratic-controlled House of Representatives had passed for the reopening of the shuttered federal agencies.
If either of the two legislative measures “were presented to the President, his advisors would recommend that he veto the bill”, the White House said in a statement Thursday evening, hours before the House passed two separate legislative measures to end the partial shutdown and reopen the affected departments.
A six-bill package fully funded departments of agriculture, transportation, state, treasury, interiors for a year, and the second bill provided temporary funding to the department of homeland security till February, to allow more time for negotiations over President Donald Trump’s wall along the border with Mexico.
Neither set of legislation contained any funding for the wall, and they were not expected to go any further. Senate Republicans have refused to table for vote any legislation not supported by Trump, whose opposition to this compromise formula was known from the time it was mooted.
“What we’re asking the Republicans in the Senate to do is to take ‘yes’ for an answer. We are sending them back exactly, word for word, what they have passed,” Nancy Pelosi, who was elected Speaker of the House, said. “Why would they not do that? Is it because the President won’t sign it? Did they not hear about the coequal branch of government, and that we the Congress send the President legislation and he can choose to sign or not?”
President Trump is meeting congressional leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, in the White House later Friday morning in one more attempt, which has already been labelled as futile, to break the stalemate and end the shutdown that started on December 22.
President Trump has sought $5 billion for a wall — which he has said can be a fence made of steel-slats, in a symbolic climbdown to signal flexibility — but Democrats were willing to allow him only $1.3 billion, to be used for boosting security along the border, but not for the wall.
“A wall is an immorality between countries,” Pelosi said Thursday during the passage of the bills, adding, “It’s an old way of thinking. It isn’t cost effective.”
“We’re not doing a wall,” she added, making clear her and the House’s opposition to the wall.
But Trump is standing his ground. “Without a wall, you cannot have border security,” he said in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room with members of unions of border agents and employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And then in line with his recent attempts to show flexibility, he added, “Without a very strong form of barrier — call it what you will — but without a wall, you cannot have border security.” But nothing less will work. He has dismissed drones, sensors and other measures suggested for boosting border security as “bells and whistles”.
White House aides have said the President is willing to settle for less than the $5 billion, but they won’t say how much less. It is around $2.5 billion according to some reports, but was not confirmed by either the White House or the President, who ducked a straight answer when asked, earlier this week. “I’d rather not say it. Could we do it for a little bit less? It’s so insignificant compared to what we’re talking about.”
Trump is under pressure from his supporters to not yield ground in this fight over the wall. “If he gives in now, that’s the end of 2019, in terms of him being an effective president,” senator Lindsey Graham, a confidante of the President, has said.
