[D]onald Trump’s plan to force a government shutdown is a “cockamamie idea” and the president is just looking for a “reality TV moment,” Sen. Patrick Leahy said in a speech on the Senate floor Monday.
“For months now he’s repeatedly called for a government shutdown unless we provide $5 billion for his boondoggle border wall,” Leahy said in the speech Monday evening. “He wants to score a made-for-reality-TV moment and he doesn’t care how many thousands of hardworking American men and women are going to suffer for it.”
The Democratic Vermont senator, who is vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, spoke for 16 minutes on the Senate floor about the impending showdown over the partial government shutdown if Congress doesn’t pass or if Trump vetoes the remaining Appropriations bills.
Five out of the 12 annual spending bills have already passed, leaving seven to complete before the Dec. 21 deadline — 11 days away.
Leahy said those remaining bills could be rolled into one package and would easily pass through Congress if not for the president’s threats.
The greatest disagreement continues to be over Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a wall on the United States’ southern border. The funding would be wrapped into the Homeland Security spending bill.
Debate on the spending bills has essentially paused as both chambers wait to see the outcome of a Tuesday meeting between Trump and Democratic congressional leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi at the White House, according to the New York Times.
“This is a wall the president gave his solemn promise to the American people that Mexico, not American taxpayers, would pay for,” Leahy said. “I haven’t seen one cent coming from Mexico and the president is going to punish the American taxpayers.”
Trump has openly expressed an appetite for forcing a government shutdown in an attempt to compel Democrats to give him the funding he wants, and has pressed for its inclusion in the final spending package before his party loses its House majority in January, a condition Democratic leaders have refused to accept, the New York Times reports.
But Democrats have rejected the president’s demands, saying they are willing to consider a much lower budget for the border wall or pass a measure that would extend the current spending level for the Department of Homeland Security for a year.
A government shutdown would close nine federal departments and dozens of federal services including the Justice Department, the Farm Service Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Park Service, and the Department of Transportation, among others.
“Taxpayers don’t send their hard-earned money to Washington so the president can shut down the government. Our job is to be good stewards of taxpayer money, not bend to the whim of the president’s tweets,” Leahy said.