Trump aims to jump-start shutdown talks in meeting with congressional leaders

government shutdown

Wednesday’s meeting is the first between the president and top lawmakers since the shutdown started before Christmas.

President Donald Trump will use his face-to-face meeting with Capitol Hill leaders Wednesday afternoon to try to find a way out of the partial government shutdown, which is beginning to sting across the country as it enters its 12th day.

Trump will “try to figure out whether he can strike a deal” with Democrats, according to a senior GOP lawmaker. The 3 p.m. meeting between the White House and congressional leaders of both parties is the first sit-down since the shutdown started before Christmas. But Democrats aren’t expecting an immediate breakthrough.

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Discussions will take place as larger swaths of the country start to feel pain from the shutdown, from the closing of the Smithsonian museums in the nation’s capital to a temporary halt to rural agriculture loans. Wednesday also would have been the first day back from the New Year holiday for roughly 380,000 federal workers.

The meeting with the top two leaders from each party in the House and Senate — which has been specifically billed as a briefing on border security by top officials from the Department of Homeland Security — is hardly expected to end the budget impasse, however.

“It’s not a meeting, it is a briefing. We expect a one-sided, non-factual presentation. Expect Democrats to again have to correct the record in the meeting and afterward,” a senior Democratic aide said Wednesday, which is technically the final day of a fully GOP-controlled government.

The briefing is being held in the White House Situation Room, a move that may be intended to add some theatrical flourish for Trump as he tries to sell the public on the need for tougher border security.

Despite their view of the event as a stunt, Democrats said they could get something out of the visit with Trump.

“Not often the president gets to hear people tell him when he’s wrong. Democrats intend to do that today,” said Justin Goodman, a spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Democrats remain firmly opposed to devoting more taxpayer dollars to Trump’s border wall, and have hatched their own plan to reopen government this week without any new border money. The White House rejected that plan on Tuesday night, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying any funding bill without that additional cash would be a “nonstarter.”

On Thursday, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will retake control of the House, swearing in a robust freshman class that is eager to deny Trump his long-sought border money.

The shift in power will embolden Pelosi and her deputies, who announced earlier this week that they have drafted a two-part spending proposal to reopen the nine shuttered federal agencies.

First, the House will pass six of the Senate’s own full-year spending bills in an attempt to lure Senate GOP leaders to follow suit, or be seen as holding thousands of workers’ jobs hostage. As an extra sweetener, the package would include a 1.9 percent pay raise for federal workers that Trump himself has opposed.

Second, the House will pass a short-term bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, while freezing its budget to the exact same levels as before. That includes $1.3 billion for border barriers that the White House and Republicans secured in a compromise last year, but not a penny more.

The plan is intended to put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who, like Pelosi, is a former appropriator who has opposed a shutdown from the start. McConnell, however, has said he will only put a spending plan on the floor that has explicit backing from the president. And Sanders made clear Tuesday night that the White House does not support the Democrats’ proposal.

“The Pelosi plan is a non-starter because it does not fund our homeland security or keep American families safe from human trafficking, drugs, and crime,” Sanders said.

Meanwhile, the stakes are getting higher for federal workers, with roughly 380,000 people told to stay home Wednesday. Another 420,000 people have been told to work without pay, with no guarantee that their next paycheck will go out.

Across the country, the shutdown is causing more pain as federal entities are forced to shutter operations as they run out of back-up plans to get cash — including in parts of the country that voted for Trump. Starting Jan. 1, the Department of Agriculture will no longer issue new loans for rural development or grants for housing.

Without funding for the Department of the Interior, trash is piling up and toilets are left uncleaned in places like California’s Joshua Tree National Park, as well as along the National Mall in Washington.

There are other looming deadlines. For instance, the next federal pay period ends on Jan. 5, though checks don’t go out until the following week. On Jan. 11, the budgets for federal courts is expected to run dry, after largely operating on court fees and other funds for weeks.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.