A year-end spending deal to fund one-quarter of the federal government rests on a critical meeting this week between President Trump and two top Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will meet with Trump Tuesday morning to talk about what agreement the two sides can reach, if any, when it comes to funding for a southern border wall.
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The meeting is critical not just to resolve the unfinished funding for fiscal 2019 and avoid a partial government shutdown, but to potentially set the tone for the new Congress, when Democrats take over the House majority.
Trump has talked of striking deals with the Democrats on infrastructure and other agenda items, and the meeting will be an early test of his ability to do so. But the wall funding issue has been particularly divisive for the two sides.
Trump, who campaigned on building a southern border wall, has insisted on up to $5 billion in fiscal year 2019 for the project. But Democrats are in lockstep resisting any more funding than a $1.6 billion accord reached in the Senate.
Pelosi, who is poised to become speaker in January, rejected any deal at all with Trump on the wall funding, even one that would provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children, who are often known by the term “Dreamers.”
Pelosi told reporters last week Democrats will only agree to an extension of current funding levels and no increase for the Homeland Security budget until 2019, when Democrats control the House.
“That’s pretty much where our position is now,” Pelosi said.
Schumer said he’d agree to Pelosi’s plan or the proposal to keep funding level at $1.6 billion. But Schumer said that funding could only be spent on border security, not a physical structure, and called funding for a border wall “a nonstarter.”
Democrats believe personnel and technology are good enough to keep out illegal immigrants and say Trump hasn’t spent any of the $1.3 billion he already has for the wall in the 2018 budget.
The Democrats’ position sets up a fight with the GOP and Trump, who believe a border wall is necessary to stop the surge of illegal immigrants who are crossing into the United States daily.
Trump has signaled he won’t sign a spending bill without robust border wall funding in excess of $1.6 billion and his desire to get that money has only increased since thousands of Central American migrants began moving toward the U.S. border with the intent of seeking asylum.
That raises the prospect of a partial government shutdown. Failure to reach a deal by Dec. 21 could shutter parts of the government just before Christmas.
But House and Senate Republicans largely back the president.
“The president is right on this,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said last week.
Blunt, like many other Republicans, believes border security should be strengthened with the help of a border wall and that the two parties should strike a deal to legalize “Dreamers” in exchange for wall money.
“There is an obligation the federal government has to secure the border, and if we ever do that it will be much easier to solve other problems,” he said.
Both parties are angling to blame the other side if Dec. 21 passes without a deal.
“Ask Chuck Schumer if he wants to shut down the government for Christmas,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said when asked about Trump’s fight to get $5 billion.
But Blunt said a partial government closure may ultimately rest with President Trump, who has veto power over legislation Congress sends to his desk and who has signaled he’ll do it if he doesn’t get the money.
“It doesn’t matter how much appetite there is for a shutdown anywhere else if he is willing to have a shutdown over this issue,” Blunt said. “And he’s given every indication he would.”
