White House officials slammed congressional Democrats ahead of a key spending vote Thursday afternoon over their alleged refusal to cut a deal to substantially increase border wall funding in exchange for permanent protections for undocumented youth.
“Did we get everything we wanted when it comes to immigration? No. Did we get a [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] fix? No,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Thursday, as the House was voting on a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package.
The 2,000-page bill includes $1.6 billion for border security funding — enough to replace or repair about 92 miles of border fencing, but a figure that falls short of the $25 billion President Trump had requested for a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border. Several House Democrats, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, have signaled opposition to the spending legislation due to its omission of any deal for beneficiaries of the DACA program.
But Mulvaney said Democrats were to blame for the absence of a DACA fix in the omnibus bill, claiming they would prefer to use the issue as a “political weapon” ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
“They think they’re winning in the courts and they do not want to fix this legislatively,” he said. “We’ve reached out to them again and again on DACA and they refuse to engage on the topic.”
Mulvaney continued, “The president has been actively engaged in trying to find a DACA solution, but the Democrats want this as a political weapon.”
Congressional GOP leaders have similarly accused Democrats of fumbling negotiations that could have codified protections for so-called Dreamers.
“We said ‘let’s do a multi-year funding for the wall for multi-year relief for the DACA kids’ and they walked away from that. They wouldn’t take that,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told Fox News earlier Thursday morning.
