NEWS
Dems to offer $1.3B for border fence
Hot:Loading... Date:2018-12-21
Dems to offer $1.3B for border fence
WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders plan to offer President Donald Trump $1.3 billion in funding for a border fence when they meet Tuesday at the White House, a bid that falls far short of the $5 billion Trump is demanding to fund a border wall.
Democrats, Republicans and the White House have until Dec. 21 reach a budget deal if they are to avert a partial government shutdown, but talks are deadlocked over funding for the wall.
As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., prepare for the Tuesday morning, Democrats and Trump are, if anything, moving further apart.
Schumer had previously suggested Trump accept $1.6 billion in border funding, the funding level included in a Senate bill with bipartisan support. But that $1.6 billion would struggle to pass the House, where Democrats won’t support it because they say it’s too much and Republicans because it’s not enough.
The $1.3 billion would extend current funding levels contained in the spending bill for the Homeland Security Department — which Democrats want to maintain at existing levels if no new deal can be reached.
If no deal is reached by the end of next week, funding will run out for the Homeland Security Department and other federal agencies. Those agencies, making up about 25 percent of the federal government, are operating on a short-term spending bill Congress passed last week to move the shutdown deadline.
Tuesday’s late-morning meeting will be the first gathering of Trump, Schumer and Pelosi ahead of the shutdown deadline. In recent weeks the two sides have increasingly dug in, and it’s not clear where compromise might lie.
With Republicans about to lose their majority in the House, the president and his GOP allies are determined to make one last attempt to get money for the wall Trump promised to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump claimed during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall but now wants U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill instead.
In a joint statement issued Monday evening, Pelosi and Schumer said the country cannot afford “a Trump Shutdown” at this time.