Deal to end shutdown still out of reach as lawmakers meet with Trump

Government Shutdown

A divided Congress and Trump’s insistence on more border money is pushing a solution to reopen the government further away.

Congressional leaders are returning to the White House Friday to try to jump-start negotiations to reopen the government, but there’s little movement toward a solution.

President Donald Trump will sit down with top leaders in both parties just two days after their last unproductive session in the Situation Room, but with a big shift in the power dynamic — a newly emboldened Speaker Nancy Pelosi who now officially controls the House.

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In their first votes as a new majority, Democrats passed a bill to reopen nine shuttered agencies Thursday night and will only pay for fencing at its current level of $1.3 billion, but GOP leaders are expected to formally reject it without offering a way out of the 14-day impasse.

With more than 800,000 federal workers feeling the effects of the shutdown and at least two Republican senators breaking with their party over the shutdown, some lawmakers have signaled a new sense of urgency to end the shutdown. Yet a deal remains out of reach, however, as neither party has signaled that they’re willing to seriously resume dealmaking, which has been stalled since before Christmas over additional funding for Trump’s border wall.

“Funding for border security is a better outcome than persisting in this partial government shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Friday morning. “I would hope that this time around, my friends across the aisle will come prepared to engage much more seriously on the issue at hand.”

“We’re not doing the wall. Does anybody have any doubt? We’re not doing the wall,” Pelosi declared to reporters Thursday evening.

She also blasted Trump for continually moving his targets: “Now they’re saying $5.6 billion … Understand this — you can’t have an agreement that people are going to walk away from.”

Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday also told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the administration is considering a deal that may involve Dreamers, the children of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States.

“There’s a lot of people talking about a lot of different ideas,” he said. “Frankly, the better part of a year ago, the president expressed a willingness to deal with the issue of Dreamers in a compassionate way so people who were brought here as children, through no fault of their own — he’s discussed that. It’s being talked about.”

But Freedom Caucus member Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told reporters Friday that no “amnesty” deal with Dreamers is being seriously considered.

Top Democrats have also so far resisted such proposals. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, No. 4 in House Democratic leadership, dismissed the idea of a DACA-border wall trade off.

“The President needs to understand that DACA and Dreamers are not part of the wall,” Lujan said in an interview. “I don’t support one more penny for this president’s wall. I don’t believe that the two need to be tied to one another.”

Republicans continue to pin the blame on Democrats for refusing to negotiate on the wall funding, even as Trump himself moves in the other direction.

“There are a lot of ideas that we could ultimately work through to get this government back open, but it’s got to start with securing the border. At some point we’re going to have to have an honest negotiation,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said in a brief interview Thursday night.

When asked if more fencing needed to be part of that deal, Scalise replied: “Fencing is part of any honest plan to secure the border.”

GOP lawmakers privately say that Democrats — who have proudly been the anti-shutdown party for years — will be forced to cave if there is no deal for several more weeks. They also say Pelosi’s ascension to the speaker’s chair on Thursday will make her more amenable to a deal, that would have otherwise drawn flak from her party’s progressive flank.

But House Democrats insist that they aren’t budging, and say it’s up to Republicans leaders in the White House and in the Capitol to soften their demands.

“What’s going to have to happen is that some Republicans in the Senate provide a reality check to the president. We’ve tried to make it easy, but I have no idea when they’ll do it — or if they’ll do it,” said long-time Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), who oversees a funding bill that has been held up in the stalemate.

Senate GOP leaders have said they will not take up the Democrats’ funding plan, which the White House has formally threatened to veto. McConnell has attempted to remove himself from the fray altogether, saying it is up to Trump and congressional Democrats to end their stalemate.

Democratic leaders have not publicly announced their next steps after Thursday night’s funding votes. Some lawmakers have suggested the House could decide to keep sending funding bills to the Senate throughout the entirety of the shutdown — just as Republicans did in 2013 during an Obamacare funding face-off.

With no clear plan, both chambers intend to adjourn for the weekend, just days into the new Congress and two weeks into a shutdown.

Price said Democrats will “keep trying to reopen the government,” though he doesn’t know if Democrats will want to waste time with multitudes of bills that the Senate won’t take up.

“It may be what we end up doing. That depends on the Senate not on us. We’re not looking to just constantly send bills, we don’t enjoy exercises in futility. But what are we supposed to do?” Price said.

Burgess Everett and Heather Caygle contributed to this story.