[T]he looming partial government shutdown over an impasse between Congress and President Donald Trump appears to have been averted — at least until February — with the introduction Wednesday of a short-term spending bill co-authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy.
The Democratic senator from Vermont and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., co-authored the “continuing resolution,” which will keep the federal government open through the New Year, but will not give the president $5 billion in funding he has demanded from Congress for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It will pass, and there won’t be a shutdown, but there was no need to get this close to the edge of the cliff just because the president was having a temper tantrum about his wall,” Leahy, who is vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
As the Friday deadline to stop a government shutdown loomed, Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced the bill on the Senate floor and Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Senate Democrats would support it.
In remarks made on the Senate floor, McConnell blamed Democrats for the impending government shutdown and said it was a result of political “spite” for Trump and nothing else.
“Faced with this intransigence, with Democrats’ failure to take our borders seriously, Republicans will continue to fulfill our duty to govern,” McConnell said.
Schumer spoke after the Kentucky senator. “I’m glad the leader thinks the government should not shut down over the president’s demand for a wall,” he said, “Shutting down the government over Christmas is a terrible idea, one of the worst to come down the pike in a very long time.”
The Senate could pass the measure as soon as Wednesday night and the House by Thursday, but no votes had been set as of Wednesday afternoon.
Leahy and Shelby have worked to pass five out of the 12 annual appropriations bills, but the seven remaining had to be completed before the Friday deadline to stave off a government shutdown.
Those remaining bills could be rolled into one package and Leahy said they could have easily passed through Congress if not for the president’s threats of a government shutdown to get his funding for the wall.
The stopgap spending bill will keep the funding for the seven remaining appropriations bills at the same level they were set when passed in 2017, until they can be reexamined in the next Congress. This will also push the debate over border security and funding for a possible wall into the new Congress, when Democrats take control of the lower chamber.
After the funding measure moves out of Congress, it will go to the White House for the president to sign. However, there has been no public confirmation from the White House that Trump will sign the measure.
White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway have both signaled in the past day that Trump is willing to take up his fight for $5 billion border-wall funding later.
On Wednesday morning, the president was still publicly insisting that Congress give him the funding he is demanding, tweeting “one way or the other we will win on the wall.”
In our Country, so much money has been poured down the drain, for so many years, but when it comes to Border Security and the Military, the Democrats fight to the death. We won on the Military, which is being completely rebuilt. One way or the other, we will win on the Wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2018
But Leahy seemed confident the president would sign it, saying the widespread bipartisan support for the measure — and Trump’s love of golf — will win the president over.
“He’ll sign it. He wants to go off and play golf,” Leahy said, “The golf game, he wants to get to that.”
