As Washington stares down the barrel of a government shutdown, the White House is refusing to back down from its budget terms. Appearing on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, press secretary Sarah Sanders said Congress must pass a continuing resolution now, then try to find a bipartisan deal on immigration afterward.
“We have to keep these two items separate,” Sanders said. “We want a clean budget bill. We’re still hopeful that that can happen.”
The last continuing resolution, passed in December, expires this Friday, meaning Congress must pass another to keep basic government functions running. But the impending expiration of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, under which people brought to America illegally as children could attain legal status, is complicating the negotiations over a new short-term CR.
Congressional Democrats are under enormous pressure from liberal activist groups to get DACA reinstated, and think that attaching it to the budget deal is their best hope of accomplishing that without handing Trump a win in the form of border security concessions. Democratic leaders have not yet signaled whether they would push their caucus to force a shutdown over the White House’s “clean” CR, but that remains a real possibility.
If the government does shut down, the next question becomes who the voters hold accountable for the failure. On Tuesday, Sanders was already making the administration’s case here as well.
“We hope that the Democrats will not hold American military hostage, will not hold the government hostage over a political battle that we should have, but we shouldn’t have connected to the budget,” Sanders said. “Sadly, I think it’s really simple: I think Democrats don’t want to see this president be successful.”
