Democrats Have More Demands After Trump Retreat on Wall
BY EMILY CADEI ON 4/26/17 AT 9:03 AM
Funding for President Donald Trump’s promised wall along the Mexico border may now be “off the table” in the negotiations to fund the government for the next five months, but several other thorny issues still stand in the way of a bipartisan agreement to avoid a government shutdown this weekend. The looming question is just how unyielding Democrats, emboldened by Trump’s walk-back on the wall, are prepared to be on issues like Obamacare funding and other provisions they want to see included—or excluded—in the spending bill.
“Taking the border wall off the table is important, but it’s not the end of the conversations,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, second in command among Senate Democrats, told reporters Tuesday at the Capitol. He added: “The Republicans are in control. The White House and the majority of the House and Senate, it’s their decision about whether the government shuts down.” In other words, the minority party has more demands, and its members are feeling pretty confident that if those demands aren’t met, and negotiations fail, it will be the Republicans, not them, who take the blame.
Funding for a border wall had been the biggest stumbling block to an agreement, which Republican and Democratic leaders have been working to reach for weeks. Despite their majorities, Republicans need Democratic votes in the Senate and likely the House to pass the spending legislation. Bipartisan negotiators had quietly been making progress on a bill that would fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2017, after the current funding law expires on April 28. But then the president and some of his top lieutenants began to demand that any proposal include more than $1 billion to begin construction of the wall, a top Trump campaign promise in 2016. Democrats quickly declared that would be a deal-breaker. Few Republicans on Capitol Hill supported the idea either, and after several days of back-and-forth the president suddenly retreated on Monday night.
In remarks at a reception with representatives of conservative media organizations, Trump conceded that the wall funding wasn’t worth risking a shutdown over, and he said he could wait to take up the issue in September, the next time Congress will have to pass a spending bill. A congressional aide confirmed Tuesday that Republicans had presented Democrats with a new legislative proposal that did not include any money for a border wall.
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http://www.newsweek.com/trump-retreat-border-wall-589835
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