Senate Republicans are gearing up for negotiations with Democrats to fulfill President Trump’s request for a southern border wall, but have yet to decide exactly how much money they’ll push for in a year-end spending deal that will dominate the post-election “lame duck” session.
“That’s the central question right now,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told the Washington Examiner Tuesday, when asked about the wall funding figure as lawmakers returned for the lame-duck session. “We ought to try to resolve it. I’m going to try to meet with the president and the leader and we’ll see.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last month he plans to seek $5 billion for a border wall in the negotiations to fund the remaining seven fiscal 2019 spending bills.
Shelby has appropriated $1.6 billion in wall funding for fiscal 2019, but he said the figure could go higher.
The House Appropriations Committee provided $5 billion for the border wall in fiscal 2019.
The final number, probably something in between, will hinge on what Democrats are willing to accept and what President Trump is willing to sign into law.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has resisted taking a specific position on wall funding and appeared open to negotiating a deal before the election. But he declined to take reporters’ questions about wall funding or anything else at a press conference about Florida’s U.S. Senate race recount.
Trump has signaled in statements and tweets that he wants robust funding for the wall and could refuse to sign a spending bill that does not include it.
“I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms?” Trump’s tweeted after signing the temporary funding measure that is now about to expire.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 3 Senate Republican, told the Washington Examiner Tuesday there are no meetings scheduled with Trump this week so far. Typically, leaders and the president sit down to map out the lame-duck agenda.
The Senate is expected to be out next week for the Thanksgiving holiday.
That leaves about two weeks until a Dec. 7 deadline, when short-term authorization of seven spending bills expires, including funding for Homeland Security where wall funding would be provided.
“We all know the president wants a significant amount of wall funding,” Thune told the Washington Examiner. “We’ll see how badly the Democrats want to get a deal at the end of the year.”
In the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who is set to become minority leader in 2019, has proposed legislation to fully fund the border wall at $23.4 billion, but the legislation faces a certain filibuster from Democrats and even some Republicans in the Senate.
House conservatives, meanwhile, have pitched legislation that would allow the Senate to skirt traditional filibuster rules and pass $25 billion for wall funding through a procedure called reconciliation.
That bill is unlikely to pass either chamber, however.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said a deal will require both parties to compromise and could be accomplished if Trump is willing to come up with a way to legalize so-called “Dreamers” whose parents brought them to the United States illegally as children. The Dreamers’ ability to remain in the United States is now dependent on court rulings upholding the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
“You have two problems, you have a gap in funding between the House and Senate on the wall,” Graham told the Washington Examiner. “And you might as well go ahead and deal with [Dreamers] at the same time. You’ve got to give something to get something. You’ll get your wall money if you do something on DACA.”
The House and Senate have made several failed attempts to pass immigration reform that would legalize Dreamers while providing border wall funding.
