Trump administration officials and bipartisan House and Senate leaders are set to meet again this week in an effort to revive stalled negotiations on lifting spending caps.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will join Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in trying to win an agreement with Trump’s top aides, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, that would lift both domestic and military spending caps as well as the nation’s borrowing limit.
The meeting is likely to happen later in the week on an unspecified day, according to aides, one of whom described the meeting more tentatively as “still in the works.”
It comes as McConnell tries to advance President Trump’s request for emergency spending legislation to deal with a massive surge in illegal immigration along the southern border.
The Senate Appropriations Committee, which is seeking a bipartisan deal with Democrats, plans to vote on a measure Wednesday that is expected to include much of Trump’s $4.5 billion request that the president said the departments need to cope with an influx of more than 100,000 illegal immigrants per month.
Democrats don’t like some of the provisions, including money for more detention that border officials say they need to house the migrants.
Republicans said they’ll focus on the humanitarian needs, which will please Democrats, but Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told the Washington Examiner the legislation will probably exclude conditions Democrats want to insert in the bill that would ensure migrants receive legal, educational, and recreational benefits.
That’s likely to lead to a partisan clash over the measure, but McConnell is not waiting for Democrats to agree to a deal.
He told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that the Senate will vote on an emergency spending measure next week. “I’m going to bring it up freestanding next week and see if they really aren’t interested in dealing with this mass of humanity that we have to take care of at the border,” McConnell said. “What’s the objection?”
McConnell must also strike a deal with the White House on how much money the federal government can spend during fiscal 2020.
Caps set under the 2011 Budget Control Act are slated to automatically reduce spending across all budgets, including the Pentagon, by $125 billion.
Republican lawmakers said McConnell won an agreement from Trump a few weeks ago to raise both domestic and military spending. McConnell, who spoke to Trump by phone, reasoned with the president that it was the only path to ensure Democrats, who control the House, would agree to lifting military spending.
But the negotiations have so far produced no such deal.
Instead, both parties appear ready to consider a one-year caps deal, rather than the usual two-year accord, and are struggling to convince Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to raise both the domestic and military spending levels.
Mulvaney is a former congressman and founding member of the fiscally conservative House Freedom Caucus, a faction that fights ferociously for lower spending.
Trump is also seeking to reduce spending. He has come under enormous pressure to avoid signing bills with major budget increases that will add to the nation’s massive deficit.
His fiscal 2020 budget called for cutting nondefense spending by $54 billion.
Mulvaney and Mnuchin are now pushing Congress to take separate action to lift the debt ceiling, which allows the nation to borrow money.
But lawmakers in both parties say the borrowing limit increase must be included in a caps deal. They won’t agree to it separately.
“When we lift the caps then we can talk about lifting the debt ceiling but that would have to come second or simultaneous but not before lifting the caps,” Pelosi said.
Without a deal, it’s difficult for the House and Senate to pass the 12 spending bills that must be signed into law by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The House has embarked on passing appropriations legislation, but those bills will ultimately have to adhere to the still-unfinished deal on the caps.
The debt limit is also expected to be reached in the coming months, with additional pressure on negotiators to strike a deal.
Pelosi suggested she could easily work out an agreement with McConnell. The Trump administration, she told reporters, has “come in with deal breakers.”
