House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said Thursday he’s optimistic President Trump’s refusal to deal with Democrats on infrastructure won’t affect ongoing conversations regarding disaster aid and trade with Canada and Mexico.
Trump this week pulled the pin on a second White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., organized to plan how to pay for a proposed $2 trillion infrastructure package. The breakdown came after Pelosi alleged the president had been “engaged in a cover-up” during special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia investigation following a conference meeting on impeachment. Trump, in response, vowed not to work with Democratic leadership amid ongoing congressional investigations into his 2016 campaign and business dealings.
“You’d have to ask him, but if you look at the movement that’s going on, there’s real positive action taking place on USMCA and on disaster relief, just not enough. At some point, Speaker Pelosi is the one that controls the floor and it’s up to her to bring these bills to the floor that are not partisan,” Scalise told reporters on Capitol Hill, referring to the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement.
“The negotiations on items like disaster and USMCA have been separate from the direct negotiations between the president himself and Speaker Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on infrastructure,” he said. “There are a lot of clear opportunities for us to get some of these things done.”
[Also read: Pelosi: Trump infrastructure meeting was ‘very, very, very strange’]
Scalise added the chance to find agreement on an infrastructure deal was also “still there,” but again put the onus back on Democrats.
The Louisiana Republican described Pelosi’s cover-up accusations as “an embarrassing pattern,” in which she has to “attack” and “harass” the president “to appease her radical base because she won’t give them impeachment.” But he hesitated to say whether House Republicans would capitalize on talk from Democrats about forcibly removing Trump from office ahead of the 2020 elections.
“It’s not about whether or not it plays well for them; I think it looks bad for them that this is what they’re wasting their majority doing instead of actually delivering results for hard-working families,” he said.
