Senate Republicans failed on Monday to find a solution to the looming government shutdown, in part because they aren’t sure what President Trump might agree to in talks with Democrats.
Republicans have effectively been frozen out of the talks and are in a wait-and-see mode as Trump and Democrats battle it out in public. Without a deal by Friday, federal workers across seven agencies would face furloughs after spending authorization expires.
In their Monday meeting, Senate Republicans talked about passing a year-long funding bill at 2018 levels for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. They also talked about a separate DHS bill that includes funding for Trump’s border wall, which is the sticking point in his fight with Democrats.
But the meeting broke up without any firm plans.
“Believe it or not, there is no leading contender,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Republicans are instead awaiting word from President Trump. There are talks ongoing between Congress and the White House, say lawmakers close to the negotiations, but no path forward yet.
“I know talks are going on on all levels, but there has been no consensus,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., the subcommittee appropriations chair over Homeland Security. “I don’t think we are going to shut the government down and I don’t think it’s a good idea to do it.”
President Trump wants $5 billion to complete the construction of a southern border wall and has said he’d shut down the government if Democrats don’t concede. Democrats mostly agreed to $1.6 billion for the wall, but now say they only support $1.3 billion as part of a year-long spending bill.
“We have given a proposal to the president that could easily pass the House and the Senate,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday. Schumer added that a border wall is “ineffective” and “wrong,”
The impasse has dragged on a week after a tense exchange over wall funding between Trump and Democratic leaders in a televised White House meeting. On Monday, Trump applied more pressure on Democrats through his favorite medium, Twitter.
“Anytime you hear a Democrat saying that you can have good Border Security without a Wall, write them off as just another politician following the party line,” Trump said. “Time for us to save billions of dollars a year and have, at the same time, far greater safety and control!”
But it’s unclear to Republicans how the effort is faring. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said he had heard Trump was going to deliver public remarks about the wall, but that never happened.
Shelby also pointed to comments made by the president indicating he might use existing military funding to pay for wall construction, which would circumvent the current spending negotiations in Congress and the Democrats.
On Monday evening, the No. 3 Republican, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters lawmakers may have to return Christmas week to deal with unfinished spending if a deal cannot be hashed out by week’s end.
Corny said a holiday session is possible but “highly improbable.”
Shelby said the Congress meanwhile would not take up legislation to fund the remaining seven bills until lawmakers had a signal that the president would agree to the deal.
“If they have some kind of assurance, even verbal, or body language or whatever works, the president has the last word,” Shelby said. “He has to sign things.”
