(Bloomberg) — Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, didn’t rule out another government shutdown if President Donald Trump and congressional leaders are unable to strike a budget deal by mid-February that includes funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“No one wants a government shutdown, it’s not a desired end,” Mulvaney said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” one of two scheduled appearances on Sunday political talk shows.
“But when the president vetoes a bill that’s put in front of him as a spending package, sometimes that has effect of shutting the government down. We don’t go into this trying to shut the government down.”
Mulvaney said Trump will insist on a “wall where we need it the most and where we need it the quickest” that isn’t “a 2,000 mile sea-to-shining-sea wall.”
But Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri said on the same show that he thinks Trump has learned from the shutdown.
“My guess is that after 35 days of this, the president also thinks shutdowns are not such great politics and bad government,” Blunt said.
