Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday that Republicans would soon propose and pass a continuing resolution to avoid a partial government shutdown after Friday, and he criticized Democrats for forcing a debate on President Trump’s border wall into next year.
Trump wants $5 billion to build part of the border wall. Democrats are refusing, and McConnell said the only choice left is to pass a short-term funding bill and reconvene in 2019.
“[F]aced with this intransigence, with Democrats’ failure to take our borders seriously, Republicans will continue to fulfill our duty to govern,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “That’s why we will soon take up a simple measure that will continue government funding into February, so we can continue this vital debate after the new Congress has convened. Because, make no mistake, there will be important unfinished business left in front of us. And we’ll owe it to the American people to tackle it.”
Leadership aides told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that the Senate would take up a two-month spending bill. Wednesday morning, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump would “certainly” consider a short-term fix that doesn’t include border wall funding.
But Conway also said Trump wasn’t backing away from his push for $5 billion, and told Fox News earlier in the day that the White House was still trying to come up with the money in some other way, such as using unallocated money already approved by Congress.
“The president is not softening his stance,” Conway said.
McConnell scolded Democrats for failing to cooperate with Trump’s request.
“I’m sorry that my Democratic colleagues couldn’t put partisanship aside and show the same good-faith flexibility that the president has shown in order to provide the resources our nation needs to secure the integrity of our borders and the safety of American families,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “But this seems to be the reality of our political moment. It seems like political spite for the president may be winning out over sensible policy — even sensible policies that are more modest than border security allocations which many Democrats supported themselves, in the recent past.”
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security and eight other federal agencies will be at risk if Congress doesn’t approve new funding by the end of Friday. Without congressional action, those agencies would be forced to furlough some percentage of their workforce until a deal is reached.
