WASHINGTON -- Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House today, the kickoff of up to 10 days of negotiations over whether the president's border wall should be funded as part of a year-end spending bill that needs to pass by Dec. 21.
The bill, which funds a portion of the government, represents Trump's last chance to get taxpayer funding for the border wall he campaigned on while the House and Senate are both controlled by Republicans. Originally, he'd promised Mexico would pay for the wall.
But Schumer and Pelosi, the top two Democrats in Congress, say there is no way their members will support funding for the wall.
If they can't come to an agreement, a portion of the government could shut down Dec. 22, just days before Christmas. "The number is $5 billion. If there is a better way to get there than what the president has laid out, then they need to come with an alternative," House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said Monday on Fox News Channel. "They can't come and say they want to shut the government down for no reason because they don't want border security."
Democrats have put two offers on the table, neither of which have wall funding: $1.6 billion in "fencing" along the southern border or a continuation of last year's spending levels for the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats are pinning responsibility to fund the government on the GOP, which currently controls both chambers of Congress as well as the White House.
In a joint statement issued Monday evening, Pelosi and Schumer said the country cannot afford "a Trump Shutdown" at this time. The president, the statement said, "knows full well that his wall proposal does not have the votes to pass the House and Senate, and should not be an obstacle to a bipartisan agreement."
Democrats are skeptical of cutting deals with Trump, which could undermine today's meeting at the White House.
In September of last year, Schumer and Pelosi left a White House meeting declaring they had a deal with the president to extend protections to Dreamers and fund border security. But the president later backed away from that agreement.
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner of The Washington Post.
A Section on 12/11/2018