No deal.
Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer got into a fiery debate with President Donald Trump at the White House Tuesday over the southern border wall in a meeting that ended with Trump saying he would be “proud to shut down the government.”
“If we don’t get what we want one way or another... I will shut down the government,” Trump said. “I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck. Because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people who have lots of problems — and drugs — pouring into our country. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.”
Congress is staring down another partial government shutdown deadline on December 21, and the hang-up is over Trump’s southern border wall; Trump wants $5 billion in dedicated wall funding, and Democrats don’t want to budge on the $1.3 billion currently being allocated for border security funding.
On one hand, this is a familiar story — every spending fight under Trump has had some tension over the president’s beloved border wall proposal. It usually ends in some funding for border security that both Republicans and Democrats can declare as a victory and some angry Trump tweets about criminal immigrants.
But Trump says this time is different. The meeting, some of which was meant to be closed to the press, quickly devolved into a televised shouting match between Trump and the two Democratic leaders over immigration, each side staking out their political talking points.
The breakdown between Trump, Pelosi, and Schumer is indicative of what a split government — with Democrats in control of the House come January, and Republicans still in the Senate majority — will look like. Pelosi, Schumer, and Trump have struck a deal in the past, but when it comes to immigration, there is very little middle ground to stand on — a message leaders want to drive home to their base.
A public shouting match in the White House
Trump has already signed a number of government spending bills into law. But seven bills still need to be voted on, and funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which has purview over construction projects on the border, is still up for debate.
That’s why Pelosi, Schumer, and Trump were in the White House: to stake out their ground. Here’s a taste of how the conversation went:
TRUMP: You can’t have very good border security without the wall, no.
PELOSI: That’s just not true. That is a political promise. Border security is a way to effectively honor our responsibility.
SCHUMER: And the experts say you can have border security without the wall, which is wasteful and doesn’t solve the problem.
TRUMP: It totally solves the problem.
PELOSI: This has spiraled down. We came here to meet the needs of the American people — who have needs. ... People are losing their jobs. The market is in a mood —
TRUMP: Well, we had the lowest unemployment that we’ve had in 50 years.
SCHUMER: [motioning for Trump to stop talking] Okay.
PELOSI: Sixty people of the Republican Party are losing their offices now because of the transition.
TRUMP: [Talking over Pelosi] And we’ve gained in the Senate. Nancy. We’ve gained in the Senate. Excuse me. Did we win the Senate? We won the Senate.
SCHUMER: [Turning to reporters] When the president brags that he won North Dakota and Indiana, he’s in real trouble.
TRUMP: I did.
Needless to say, there was no compromise.
Trump made clear he was more than comfortable with shutting down the government, which he has previously called a “great political issue,” and that he would even take the blame.
The government has shut down twice under Trump — once because Democrats wanted to force a larger Senate debate on immigration (that went nowhere) and once because Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was mad about government spending. Trump threatened to veto a spending bill and shut down the government over the summer because of the border wall, only to be convinced otherwise.
Democrats have some leverage. And Trump is owning the shutdown.
Even in the minority, Democrats have some leverage over spending negotiations. Republicans only control 51 seats in the Senate, but a spending bill needs 60 votes to pass, meaning any deal needs bipartisan support to pass.
Trump knows this math well, and repeated it to Pelosi during the meeting.
“If I needed the votes for the wall in the House, I would have them in one session,” he said. We are, of course long past the days of Mexico paying for the wall — which was Trump’s rallying cry on the campaign trail.
But Trump’s problems might not only be in the Senate. In the House, a cohort of conservatives are reluctant to vote for major funding packages, a political reality that often forces Republican leaders to turn to Democrats in the lower chamber as well.
Pelosi was so confident of this dynamic that she dared Trump to push for the vote in the House and see the spending bill fail — even if it had funding for the wall.
“Well, let’s take the vote and find out,” she said.
Democrats weren’t scared of calling out Trump through every twist and turn in their talks. Trump uses fear about the border to rile up his base — which Schumer and Pelosi were quick to call out. Of course, the meeting was as much a political stage for Democrats as it was for Trump. From the beginning, Democrats staked out the wall as a tangible policy idea they could fight against with their voter base’s support.
And they’re not budging.