House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speak during a briefing in reaction to Republican legislation to overhaul the tax code on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:49 pm
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed that Trump is given a $1 billion immigration slush fund for his wall, and Democrats rejected the offer.
Garrett Haake of NBC News reported:
Right now there’s no deal. There’s no Mexico coming in to save the day here and pay for the wall. We know that the latest attempt to come up with a possible deal has fallen through, really within the last two hours. Our team up here has been chasing the outlines of a deal that Republicans proposed to Democrats. They said, hey, guys, how about we do the $1.6 billion that was in the original negotiated spending bill. Then we’re going to set aside a billion dollars in what Democrats are describing as a slush fund, discretionary money that the president could spend on his immigration priorities. As you can imagine, it did not take very long for Democrats to reject that offer. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, my understanding the way this went is it was Chuck Schumer who picked up the phone to call Mitch Mcconnell and say this wouldn’t fly.
I’ve been talking to senators in both parties over the last 30 minutes or so. Democrats, in particular, said this was never going to get off the ground. To put it simply, that’s not how this works. The president doesn’t just get a billion dollars to spend on whatever he wants. That’s why we have a committee process. That’s why we have the Congress here controlling the power of the purse to spend money as Congress sees fit, not just the way the president sees fit.
But the bottom line here, talking to especially Republicans, there’s just no energy for this fight. There is nobody up here who seems particularly excited about the prospect of blowing through their Christmas break, of shutting the government down to fight for the president’s wall. There’s just no energy for it. And I think the signs — if we want to look for green shoots, if you will, positive signs here, the fact these deals are being offered and rejected, at least means the two sides are talking. It does seem like Congress will have to come up with something that both of these sides can agree to. Then that the president can feel comfortable saying yes to. Because there just is not the appetite at all for a shutdown up here.
Video:
Trump and the Republicans are looking for a way out and caving fast, but Democrats are not going to give them a single penny for the wall. McConnell’s idea would be a violation of the constitutional separation of powers. The president does not get money to spend any way he wants, and we all know that Trump would have spent that billion on the wall.
Democrats aren’t budging. If Trump wants to avoid a government shutdown, he needs to forget about his wall.
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