Trump repeats shutdown threat
Lawmakers don’t take kindly to threat over border funds
President Donald Trump listens to a question at a news conference Monday in the White House. He said he would have “no problem” with a government shutdown this fall.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared Monday that he would have “no problem” shutting down the federal government this fall if Congress won’t come up with more money for border security.
Trump’s threat, his second in two days, put him further at odds with his own party in Congress, where many Republicans are facing tough re-election fights this November. A shutdown when government funding expires at the end of September, just weeks before the midterm elections, would be the second under unified Republican control of Washington, after a weekend stoppage in January.
“I would have no problem doing a shutdown,” Trump said during a joint press conference at the White House with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. “It’s time we had proper border security. We’re the laughingstock of the world.”
Trump launched an aggressive push for additional border security measures early this year. They include $25 billion toward construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but he acknowledged on Monday his demands are a starting point.
“I’ll always leave room for negotiation,” he said.
Republican leaders believed they had secured Trump’s patience last week when they huddled at the White House to discuss strategy ahead of the budget year that starts Oct. 1.
After the meeting, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a radio interviewer that a shutdown so close to the Nov. 6 midterm elections won’t happen.
On Monday, he reiterated that the Senate is taking steps toward “funding the government in a timely and orderly manner,” saying the Senate would be finishing up a package of budget bills this week.
The Senate, which canceled most of its August recess in part to debate spending bills, is poised this week to pass a package of bills funding the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Treasury, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.
The House and Senate have already approved a separate package funding the departments of Energy and Veterans Affairs and are working out differences in the competing versions. The Senate plans in August to vote on the Defense, Labor and Health and Human Services spending bill.
Republicans plan to have the House pass these packages when it returns from recess Sept. 4 and send them to Trump’s desk.
Nine of the 12 annual spending bills needed to keep the government running would be enacted before Oct. 1, leaving funding for the departments of
Homeland Security, Commerce, Justice and the State department on autopilot until after the election. Because Trump’s wall was funded during the current fiscal year, it would continue for the length of the extension.
“It’s been going well, very well,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the panel overseeing funding for transportation, housing and related programs. “That’s why I was surprised to see [Trump’s shutdown comments], because we’ve made more progress, more quickly this year than in many years.”
Trump on Monday said he had no “red line” for precisely what he would require from Congress, and he made no comment on timing.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said he assumed Trump’s words were a “negotiating tactic. I hope it’s a negotiating tactic.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are working to fund the government and that Trump’s threat “is not good for anything.”
He added: “It might help him. It might not help him. It doesn’t help us right now.”
“I know he’s frustrated — and I am, too — that we haven’t taken steps to adequately deal with border security, but we’ve got an orderly appropriations process going through here,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Monday. Of Trump’s unpredictability, Cornyn commented: “He has his own unique style.”
Democrats said Trump’s comments show he’s trying to prevent a bipartisan compromise.
“Partisan games and shutdown threats are no way to run our government, and I hope House Republicans will be willing to stand up to President Trump and work in good faith to produce appropriations bills with bipartisan support,” said Nita Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, in a statement.
Democrats have long opposed financing the wall but don’t have enough votes by themselves to block House approval of that amount. They have the strength to derail legislation in the closely divided Senate.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram, Matthew Daly, Catherine Lucey and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Erik Wasson, Anna Edgerton and staff members of Bloomberg News; and by Seung Min Kim and staff members of