So much for a deal.
President Trump’s new proposal for avoiding a government shutdown turned out to be a demand for a $1 billion “slush fund” for immigration enforcement rather than a request for wall funding, congressional Democrats said Tuesday afternoon. They rejected that out of hand.
“We cannot accept the offer they made of a billion-dollar slush fund for the President to implement his very wrong immigration policies,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters as she exited a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Pelosi said the White House “has backed off the wall, that terminology, but what they’d want to do with that $1 billion is problematic.”
The offer was made by the White House through Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Pelosi said.
That came after White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders indicated Trump was willing to back off his demand for $5 billion for a border wall in any deal that funds the government, which is set to partly run out of funding as of Friday.
Democrats have held firm that there won’t be any Mexican border wall funding in any agreement. Trump, who declared that he’d be “proud” to shut down the government over a border wall fight, has backed himself and congressional Republicans into a corner with his position — and it appears that unless he capitulates further, he’ll trigger a partial government shutdown.
