Republicans say it’s House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s fault that Congress can’t reach a deal to keep the government open past Friday.
Pelosi, D-Calif., is negotiating with Democrats to ensure she has enough votes to become the next House speaker in 2019. But Republicans say that vote isn’t certain, and that Pelosi isn’t strong enough yet to get enough Democrats to support a funding deal with Republicans.
“My impression is that the incoming speaker feels she doesn’t have the latitude to settle this,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday after Democrats rejected a GOP offer.
Republicans offered Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a proposal to fund the remaining 25 percent of government operations for fiscal 2019 that would include an already-agreed-on $1.6 billion for border security. The GOP offer tacked on an extra $1 billion for border security, however, which Democrats rejected.
“Leader Schumer and I have said that we cannot accept the offer they made of a billion dollar slush fund for the President to implement his very wrong immigration policies, so that won’t happen,” Pelosi said after the meeting.
Most Democrats are staunchly opposed to building a southern border wall and have pledged to oppose any border security funding that exceeds the $1.6 billion included in the Senate’s bipartisan Homeland Security spending bill, which passed the committee earlier this year.
Pelosi has worked to block wall funding since the president took office. Nonetheless, Republicans see a leadership struggle behind the partisan stalemate on funding.
“They’ve got a very weak speaker,” Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said Tuesday after Republicans huddled at lunch, referring to Pelosi. “The votes she’s able to cobble together to elect her speaker don’t make her a very strong speaker in my judgment.”
House Republicans agreed with their Senate counterparts that her battle for votes has stymied the typical dealmaking that takes place in negotiating government funding.
“The reason why Nancy Pelosi can’t vote for a package that she otherwise would be for because she has opening day vote problems,” said House Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. “That would be a challenge for any new speaker going into any new Congress. It’s not unique to Pelosi. But what Schumer is trying to do is protect her votes on opening day.”
But Pelosi’s stance on the wall has been largely the same since President Trump took office. She fought to ensure border security in 2018 excluded money for a physical structure, for example, or for an expansion of detention facilities for illegal immigrants who cross the border.
“Nancy Pelosi’s position on the wall has been consistent since Trump proposed it,” her spokesman, Drew Hammill, said Tuesday. “It’s expensive, ineffective and immoral, and has bipartisan opposition.”
Pelosi and Trump engaged in a testy exchange over her power at a White House meeting about government funding earlier this month. She was there with Schumer to try to secure a deal on government funding and, specifically, border security money.
Trump took part of the meeting public, and with cameras rolling, raised Pelosi’s fight to secure the 218 votes needed to become speaker on Jan. 3.
“Nancy’s in a situation where it’s not easy for her to talk right now, and I understand, and I fully understand that,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a good discussion, and we’re going to see what happens. But we have to have border security.”
Pelosi shot back, “Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.”
Democrats wiped out the GOP in November, winning 40 seats and the majority with the help of new progressive lawmakers who were seeking a change in the top party leadership.
Pelosi last week struck a deal to win the votes for speaker, but only after promising to step aside in two years, or four if she wins a caucus supermajority vote in 2020.
