House sends spending bill to Senate including border security funding, Trump meets with Republicans to wrangle support
The president wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell to pass spending bill with a simple majority.
The Senate on Friday was scrambling to take up a spending package with billions in funding for a border wall, as President Trump made clear there’s a “good chance” for a partial government shutdown at midnight.
The House on Thursday approved $5.7 billion for a border wall as part of a measure to fund the government through early February. But the Senate on Friday afternoon was struggling to overcome a procedural hurdle to even set up a vote on the bill, amid Democrats’ refusal to give in on a border wall.
“President Trump: you will not get your wall,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor. “Abandon your shutdown strategy. You’re not getting the wall today, next week or on January 3rd, when Democrats take control of the House.”
The Senate needs a simple majority to simply take up the spending package — after which the measure would need an even more daunting 60-vote majority to pass. But as of Friday afternoon, the procedural vote remained open for more than four hours as Republicans struggled to cobble together support. Things were complicated by outgoing GOP Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake voting against proceeding and other lawmakers traveling for the holidays.
Sources told Fox News Pence is meeting with Schumer on Capitol Hill, along with White House aides Mick Mulvaney and Jared Kushner.
The president – who says a spending package must include new funding for border security — told reporters Friday he hopes there won’t be a shutdown but he is prepared to ride one out if there is.
“Now it’s up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown tonight,” Trump said.
Earlier, the president hailed the House vote as a big victory – one that GOP leaders scrambled to achieve when the president abruptly backed off tacit support for an earlier Senate-approved stopgap that did not include the wall money.
With a 60-vote threshold, however, the House-passed package stands little chance of being endorsed on the Senate side. Still, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday, “Let’s advance this legislation. Let’s pass it. Let’s finish our work for this year. Let’s secure our country.”
Earlier in the day, the president publicly urged McConnell to deploy the so-called “nuclear option” to jam through the spending package, which refers to changing Senate precedent so legislation could be approved with a 51-vote majority, instead of the usual 60. But McConnell’s office made clear the majority leader would not do that, and several Republican senators said they also opposed it.
Trump backed the “nuclear option” after Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and others called for it.
Absent a sudden compromise or an even more unlikely filibuster change, funding for nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies could lapse at midnight, resulting in a partial shutdown just as the Christmas break begins.
Both sides were busy assigning blaming Friday morning, in anticipation of that scenario. While Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have already branded this outcome a Trump shutdown, the president tweeted Friday that “it will be a Democrat Shutdown!” if they don’t support the measure before them in the Senate.
“No matter what happens today in the Senate, Republican House Members should be very proud of themselves. They flew back to Washington from all parts of the World in order to vote for Border Security and the Wall. Not one Democrat voted yes, and we won big. I am very proud of you!” he tweeted.
Fox News’ Judson Berger and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
