House Republicans are struggling to come up with a strategy to fulfill President Trump ‘s demands that the lower chamber pass a funding bill that…
House Republicans are struggling to come up with a strategy to fulfill President Trump ‘s demands that the lower chamber pass a funding bill that includes $5 billion for his promised border wall.
By Wednesday evening, GOP leaders still had not settled on what vehicle they would use to fund the wall or if they would even take a vote this week to do so. Lawmakers in the House have until just Dec. 21 to avert a partial government shutdown, and are only scheduled to be working for four of those days.
“The president is still interested in trying to get a deal,” Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told The Hill as he emerged from a leadership meeting in Speaker Paul Ryan ‘s ceremonial office just off the House floor. “He’s been advocating for $5 billion to everybody, not just Republicans.… We support the objective of making sure the president has the money he needs to secure the border.”
In an explosive meeting in the Oval Office a day earlier, Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that he could easily push $5 billion in wall funding through the House. Pelosi told him the bill would fail spectacularly — and dared him to try.
Now, Scalise, Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are under enormous pressure to prove their ally in the White House was correct and that Pelosi, the likely incoming Speaker, was wrong.
But it was still unclear late in the day whether Republicans would have enough votes to pass such a package on a party-line vote; Democrats have agreed to back $1.6 billion for border security, but have rejected Trump’s much larger $5 billion wall demands.
Scalise’s team did not whip a $5 billion wall package Wednesday, but they did a “bed check” to figure out which lawmakers were in the Capitol voting. Since the Nov. 6 midterm election, scores of lawmakers, including those who lost their seats and others who won higher office, have been skipping votes, complicating vote-counting efforts.
