By Kristina Peterson
WASHINGTON -- A partisan battle of wills over the border wall is
set to come to a head this week, with Democrats and President Trump
entrenched in an impasse and less than a week left to avoid a
partial government shutdown.
With time dwindling before seven spending bills expire at 12:01
a.m. Saturday, lawmakers had little sense of how they would resolve
the long-brewing fight over the border wall, which has become a
potent political symbol among both parties.
"We're at an impasse and at the moment it doesn't look like
things are getting any better," Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairman Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) said shortly before the Senate
emptied out last week. "There has to be some kind of a
breakthrough," he said, before noting, "No movement yet."
The charged political dynamics around funding a wall along the
Southern border with Mexico have left both parties with few
incentives to compromise. Mr. Trump made building the wall his
signature campaign pledge in 2016, and delivering on it has become
increasingly important as the 2020 election nears. Mr. Trump had
said Mexico would pay for it.
Meanwhile, Democrats, energized by their recent midterm
victories, will only gain leverage when they take back control of
the House in January. And with dozens of Democrats considering a
2020 presidential run, the party's left wing is in no mood to
compromise with the president.
For each party, "the goal of pleasing the base is a huge
impediment to getting a deal done," said Greg Valliere, chief
global strategist at Horizon Investments. "Trump feels, with some
justification, that his base wants a very tough immigration policy
and a wall. That's a really enormous promise he made to his base,"
he said. Meanwhile, Democrats, he said "smell blood. They want to
show their base how tough they are."
Republicans winced when Mr. Trump on Tuesday said in a meeting
at the White House with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.,
Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) that he
would be "proud" to shut down the government if Congress won't send
him $5 billion to build the wall.
Republicans who had hoped to label any partial shutdown a
"Schumer shutdown" backed off that line of attack after Tuesday's
meeting. GOP leaders have said they hope to avoid a shuttering of
the government.
"A shutdown ultimately is a bad deal from a policy point of
view, and it's also detrimental politically," said Sen. Jerry Moran
(R., Kan.), a former chairman of Senate Republicans' campaign arm.
"There is damage to all of us to Republicans, Democrats, the White
House -- whoever's in office -- when this occurs."
But Democrats said Mr. Trump's words saddled him alone with the
burden of trying to avoid a shutdown and taking political blame if
one occurs.
"The onus is on him -- he's the only one that's talking about a
government shutdown," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), a
member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "It's pretty clear
he's going to have to accept responsibility."
GOP leaders had offered to spread the $5 billion in wall funding
over two years, which Democrats have rejected. Democrats support
border security, but believe the wall is an ineffective use of
funds. At the White House on Tuesday, Democratic leaders proposed
either passing the six less-controversial spending bills and
extending current funding for Homeland Security, which oversees the
border wall, through September 2019, or extending current funding
for all seven bills. Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Pelosi said Mr. Trump
told them he would think about their proposals.
Senate Democrats and Republicans had previously agreed to $1.6
billion in border security as part of their Homeland Security
spending bill, but Mr. Schumer said last week that bill couldn't
pass the House.
"I want to be crystal clear: There will not be additional
appropriations to pay for the border wall," Mr. Schumer said on the
Senate floor late last week.
Mrs. Pelosi is under particular pressure to resist agreeing to
any funding for the border wall. Although she is expected to win a
floor election in January to become the next House speaker, she
faces warnings from some House Democrats that they would defect
were she to cede too much in negotiations with Mr. Trump.
Both parties are already calculating how the political winds
might shift in January if the government does shut down, or passes
a very short-term spending patch pushing the fight into next year.
Mrs. Pelosi said she would simply pass an extension of current
funding in the House, sending it over to the Senate.
"As soon as we took over the Congress, we would pass legislation
to open up government and send it to the Senate, and we think it
would then go to his desk. But we don't have to go to that place,"
she said.
But Republicans believe Mrs. Pelosi would rather not have to be
still mired in the spending fight when Democrats take control of
the House.
If the government does shut down on Saturday, its effects would
likely be more limited than previous shutdowns. Congress has
already funded swaths of the government, including the Defense and
Labor departments. Even for agencies that aren't already funded,
employees with essential jobs would still report to work.
"Obviously we want to avoid a government shutdown, but if you
look at what the real-world consequences would be, I think this
shutdown would be different because we have funded most of the
government," said Rep. Richard Hudson (R., N.C.) "I don't think the
American people will feel an impact from this like they have in the
past."
Still, many federal employees would be required to work without
getting paid immediately, though Congress typically votes later to
pay them retroactively. More than 420,000 federal employees,
including 41,000 law-enforcement officials and up to 88% of the
Homeland Security Department staff, would be working without pay,
according to estimates from Senate Appropriations Committee
Democratic staff. And more than 380,000 federal employees would be
furloughed, including big chunks of the Commerce Department,
National Park Service and the Forest Service.
--Andrew Duehren and Natalie Andrews contributed to this
article.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 16, 2018 07:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.