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Congressional Leaders Forge ‘Deal In Principle’ To Avoid Another Shutdown

Congressional Leaders Forge ‘Deal In Principle’ To Avoid Another Shutdown

Congressional leaders said on Monday night that they had reached a “deal in principle” over funding for border barriers — an agreement that if signed by President Trump would forestall another government shutdown at midnight Friday. But the negotiators noted that they have gotten no assurances from the White House, which didn’t immediately comment on the deal.

Trump’s assent is hardly assured, because the bipartisan and bicameral committee has allocated nothing close to the funding he demanded to finance his “border wall.” Their framework provides only $1.375 billion for barriers along the Mexican border — with 55 miles of new fencing — which is less than one-fourth of the $5.7 billion sought by Trump to build walls stretching 200 miles.

Democrats dropped a late demand for strict limits on the number of detention beds that could be used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants. They had sought to reduce the number of detention beds in the budget to about 35,000, or 1 7,000 less than Republicans and Trump demanded. Democratic sources told CNN that the tentative agreement had compromised on just under 41,000 beds, approximately the same as in the current budget.

Trump’s determination to win wall funding in the budget resulted in a record 35-day government shutdown that began a few days before Christmas. When the shutdown began to interfere with aviation and other basic services, despite hundreds of thousands of federal workers showing up at their jobs unpaid, the White House folded. Trump agreed to a short-term spending bill that permitted negotiations to resume, with a deadline of Feb. 15.

The White House believes that even with far smaller appropriations from Congress, officials can reprogram money from other agencies to build the wall — or declare a national emergency to achieve the same purpose. But any such moves are certain to provoke litigation that could curtail or delay construction.

While Congressional negotiations to avert a shutdown continued on Monday evening, Trump held a campaign-style rally in El Paso, Texas, to promote the wall. “They say that progress is being made,” he told the rally crowd. “Just so you know. Just now, just now! I said wait a minute, I gotta take care of my people from Texas. I got to go. I don’t even want to hear about it. I don’t want to hear about it.” Not far from Trump’s event,  former El Paso Rep. Beto O’Rourke — who may seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 — led a march and rally against the wall. O’Rourke told his cheering crowd that “walls don’t save lives, walls end lives” — and that El Paso was a safe city “not because of a wall but in spite of it.”

 

 

 

 

Obama Would Sign Short-Term Spending Bill To Avoid Shutdown

Obama Would Sign Short-Term Spending Bill To Avoid Shutdown

By John T. Bennett, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The White House is signaling it would not block a short-term spending bill to avert a government shutdown should lawmakers need to keep working on a massive spending measure after the Dec. 11 deadline.

That date is when an existing government-wide continuing resolution will expire. By 11:59 p.m. Eastern that day, Congress must pass an omnibus spending measure crafted to higher spending limits in a budget deal already signed into law, or send President Barack Obama another short-term measure. The alternative is a government shutdown just weeks before Christmas.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, briefing reporters in Paris Monday, put the onus on Republican leaders to avoid a shutdown.

He said White House officials “take some solace in” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s past statements about opposing more government shutdowns. Earnest also repeated a line he has used in recent months, saying he doubts Speaker Paul D. Ryan wants to preside over a shutdown so early in his new job.

Earnest said Obama would not sign a long-term continuing resolution. The White House has for most of the year pushed for increased domestic spending, an objective it secured in the recent bipartisan budget deal.

However, Earnest said the president would put his signature on a short-term CR should lawmakers need another few days to complete a year-end budget bill.

Earlier Monday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters lawmakers might need to pass a one-week CR that would give them until Dec. 18 to complete work on the omnibus measure, which would include higher defense and domestic spending levels.

©2015 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington September 3, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Senator Ted Cruz Falls In Line Ahead Of Another Shutdown Showdown

Senator Ted Cruz Falls In Line Ahead Of Another Shutdown Showdown

By Heidi Przybyla, Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Republicans are bringing Sen. Ted Cruz back into the fold as Congress heads for another shutdown showdown.

The Texas Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate just days earlier criticized his party’s approach of using a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security to force President Barack Obama to renege on his November orders easing deportations.

Yet Cruz, who drove a 2013 confrontation over Obamacare that led to a 16-day shutdown, commanded the floor at a bicameral Republican news conference Thursday meant to demonstrate unity. He blamed Democrats for blocking the bill and, when asked if his party was picking the right legislative vehicle to fight Obama’s orders, Cruz fell into line.

“We should use every constitutional check and balance we have,” said Cruz. “There are a host of constitutional checks and balances, including confirmation power, that we should be using.”

That contrasts with comments he made earlier in the week describing the strategy as a losing one. Cruz had been advocating for a different approach: holding up Obama’s nominations, including U.S. attorney Loretta Lynch to replace Attorney General Eric Holder, until Obama reverses his policy.

The junior senator from Texas has come under criticism within his own party for his role in the 2013 shutdown and is now weighing how to position himself in a potentially crowded field of Republican presidential contenders.

Democrats and Republicans are leaving for a weeklong recess in a standoff over funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which must be renewed by Feb. 27. When they return, they’ll have but a few legislative days to bridge their differences.

Instead of heading in that direction, both sides are digging in on their positions, underscored by Cruz’s attendance at the news conference.

Democrats, who have remained united in their opposition to debating the president’s immigration policies as part of a routine funding bill, had pounced on the split between Cruz and his party.

“The finger pointing between House and Senate Republicans that’d been happening behind the scenes for weeks spilled into the open today in a big way,” Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, wrote in a Feb. 10 dispatch. “Meanwhile, Senator Cruz is telling everyone that Senator McConnell is wrong and he was right all along.”

Last week, House Speaker John Boehner chided Cruz and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to take the responsibility for rounding up votes to reverse the president’s orders.

Cruz’s entry into the fray is unlikely to change the minds of Democrats, who have prevented Senate leaders three times from even debating the bill. But at least, with Cruz’s enlistment, Republicans can make the case to conservatives that they tried.

Photo: jbouie via Flickr

Boehner: Senate Democrats Need To ‘Get Off Their …’

Boehner: Senate Democrats Need To ‘Get Off Their …’

By Matt Fuller, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — GOP House leaders emerged from a Republican Conference meeting Wednesday with a persistent refrain on Department of Homeland Security funding: The House has done its job; it’s time for the Senate to act.

During their weekly Republican leadership press conference, Speaker John Boehner repeatedly called on the Senate to take up the House-passed DHS funding bill, which Senate Democrats have repeatedly blocked the chamber from considering.

“You know, in the gift shop out here, they’ve got these little booklets on how a bill becomes a law,” a fired-up Boehner said, as camera shutters clicked away. “The House has done its job! Why don’t you go ask the Senate Democrats when they’re going to get off their ass and do something?!”

When Boehner was asked if this standoff with the Senate was how he planned for the DHS bill to play out — Senate Republicans now insist it’s on House Republicans to send over a new bill — Boehner said the process was working “exactly” the way he envisioned it.

“The House did its job,” Boehner said. “We won the fight to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and to stop the president’s unconstitutional actions. Now it’s time for the Senate to do their work.”

But if they don’t, does Boehner ever intend on throwing the Senate a lifeline?

“The House has done its job,” Boehner said. “It’s time for the Senate to do theirs.”

Time and again, Republican members trickling out of the Wednesday morning conference meeting stubbornly repeated some variation of Boehner’s new favorite line: The House did its job, now it’s the Senate’s turn.

During conference Wednesday, members heard from two of their former House colleagues now in the Senate: Cory Gardner of Colorado and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

But instead of Gardner and Moore Capito quelling the House insistence that the Senate act, the two freshmen senators got an earful that they weren’t doing enough.

According to Rep. Ron DeSantis of Florida, one member in the conference meeting told the senators they shouldn’t be letting the Senate go home on the weekend.

DeSantis said there were ways Republicans could pressure Senate Democrats — simultaneously noting he’s “not an expert on kind of how the Senate’s run” — and he said the sense among the public was that Senate Republicans weren’t doing enough.

In a mocking tone, DeSantis said the Senate’s attitude was, “‘OK, have a vote, OK, you don’t have 60, OK, we got to move on to something else now.'”

House members simply aren’t satisfied with the Senate’s effort on the House-passed DHS bill, which would block President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration. And House Republicans aren’t moving off their position that the Senate take up their bill. That insistence was typified Wednesday in one particularly iron-willed exchange between Budget Chairman Tom Price and a reporter.

“The speaker’s position, and our position, is that the House has already acted; it’s time for the Senate to act,” the Georgia Republican said Wednesday morning.

Asked if the more likely option then was for a continuing resolution or for a shutdown, Price said the option was for the Senate to act.

Presented with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments Tuesday that it was “obviously” up to the House to send over a new bill, Price was emphatic. “The House has acted,” he said, content to leave it at that.

But Rebecca Shabad, a reporter for The Hill, was not content to leave it at that. She asked if Price thought the House might have to act again. “It’s up to the Senate to act,” Price replied.

Asked again if a CR was more likely, given the short amount of time before a DHS shutdown on Feb. 28, Price resorted to a similar line. “The House has acted. It’s up to the Senate to act,” he said.

And that’s the official position from House Republicans: They’re not budging.

A similarly obstinate back-and-forth is playing out between Boehner and McConnell in the press. Boehner continues to insist the DHS funding bill is up to the Senate, while McConnell points to three failed votes to proceed to the legislation.

When Boehner was asked about the constantly evolving McConnell-Boehner relationship Wednesday, he didn’t say much.

“I love Mitch,” Boehner said. “He has a tough job to do, and so do I.”

And that was that.

Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) later issued the following statement on Boehner’s comments:

“We know Speaker Boehner is frustrated but cursing is not going to resolve the squabbling among Republicans that led to this impasse. Democrats have been clear from day one about the way out of this mess: take up the clean Homeland Security funding bill which Republicans signed off on in December – and which is ready to come to the Senate floor – pass it, and move on. If Republicans want to debate immigration policy next, Democrats are happy to have that debate.

“Neither Speaker Boehner nor Senator McConnell appears willing to do the right thing and stand up to the extremists in their caucus like Senator Ted Cruz who have led us here. As we speak, Senator McConnell is on the verge of wasting three entire weeks that could have been used to pass a clean Homeland Security bill simply because he is unwilling to stand up to Senator Cruz.

“The Republican Congress is a mess, pure and simple. Democrats are happy to help our Republican colleagues resolve their problems but the first step is for Republican leaders to do the right thing and pass a clean bill to fund Homeland Security.”

Photo: Talk Radio News Service via Flickr