The Senate inched closer towards a compromise that would let lawmakers leave town for the holiday break, but the solution they will vote on does not solve the larger issues at hand regarding border security.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on the Senate floor Wednesday that he would be introducing a short-term bill that would fund the government through Feb. 8. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation as soon as today, and send it to the House for passage before the President can sign it into law, although the House is not expected to take it up until Thursday at the earliest. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said his party would support the measure.
Portions of the government will shut down on Friday at midnight if the President does not sign legislation from Congress to keep it open. The government needs to fund seven remaining appropriations bills. While six are close to completion, according to officials in both parties, Congress has been hung up on the seventh bill, which would fund President Trump’s oft-touted wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Trump had said he would “proudly” shut down the government if he did not receive his requested $5 billion for border security, but the Republican-led Congress did not have the votes to deliver that to him. Democrats had bulked at providing anything more than $1.3 billion for that purpose, and Republicans, who have a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, needed at least nine Democrats on board with Trump’s proposals to pass the bill. When Republicans offered a $1.6 billion proposal for border security and another $1 billion in discretionary spending — which Trump could use to build some of the physical wall, according to a GOP leadership aide — on Tuesday, Democrats rejected it outright.
While the stopgap bill would be a victory for the government employees who would not have to work without pay during a shutdown, and for the lawmakers who would not have to spend the Christmas holiday in Washington, it is undoubtedly a setback for the President and his desired border wall.
If President Trump signs this legislation, it would not only be a reversal of his hardline stance about shutting down the government over a border wall. It would be a signal of defeat when he had utmost leverage with negotiations. Come February, when the battle over the wall will inevitably begin again, he will be facing a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, who have made clear they will not pass anything remotely akin to what the President wants in this arena. He will have to admit he cannot get the desired funding for the wall by the end of the first term, its just a question of when he has to that.
“This problem doesn’t doesn’t get easier by moving the deadline a month,” one House Democratic aide told TIME. “At some point, the rubber has to meet the road and the President has to finally and officially give in on the wall.”
