Short-term funding

McConnell to introduce short-term funding bill to avert shutdown

The bill will fund the government through early February.

By BURGESS EVERETT

Mitch McConnell is moving to bail out Congress an

Mitch McConnell

d President Donald Trump from an intractable government shutdown impasse, moving on Wednesday to fund the government into early February and avoid a funding lapse right before the holidays.

The Senate majority leader will introduce a bill that funds the government through Feb. 8 after a longer-term offer was rejected by congressional Democrats on Tuesday amid a continuing battle between Trump and congressional Democrats over his border wall. With Trump softening his demands for $5 billion for the border wall in the waning days of the GOP Congress, McConnell is moving to avoid a political blunder four days before Christmas, and it appears Trump is willing to sign the bill.

"It seems like political spite for the president may be winning out over sensible policy, even sensible policies that are more modest than border security allocations which many Democrats supported themselves, in the recent past," McConnell said. "We will turn to a clean [stop gap spending bill] later today, so we can make sure we don’t end this year the way we began it — with another government shutdown because of Democrats’ allergy to sensible immigration policies."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said after McConnell's announcement that it appears Trump backed down from his position.

"The president's insistence on billions for the wall has been the biggest obstacle," Schumer said.

Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to the president, said the "president is not going to back down" from his fight for border security but declined to rule out Trump signing the stopgap spending bill: “We’ll see what the Senate and the House present to the president.”

“The CR to keep the government going until February 8 is what they’re looking at now but that does not change whatsoever two important facts. One, that this president believes his first and solemn duty is to keep us safe, and that includes enhanced border security," Conway said. "And second, it does not change the fact that this border is so porous that all it’s done is gotten worse since those Democrats voted for border security 12 years ago. So this president is not going to back down from that.”

Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected an offer from McConnell on Tuesday because it provided $1 billion more than they were willing to accept for border security, deeming it a "slush fund." With effective veto power over any deal and no appetite to hand Trump a political win, Democrats have not budged in recent days in their demands that Homeland Security funding stay flat and they will give no more than $1.3 billion for border fencing.

Trump said just a week ago he would be "proud" to shut the government down over the border in an unusual televised clash with Pelosi and Schumer. But Trump has gradually backed away from the $5 billion number, while Democrats haven't moved. McConnell called it "knee-jerk, partisan opposition to the administration’s reasonable and flexible requests."

The punt sets up yet another confrontation for early next year, when Pelosi is expected to take over the House majority as speaker and will start with yet another immediate funding deadline upon her. But there's no reason to expect Democrats to give in next year: In fact, without a GOP Congress there's almost no chance Trump will get more border funding absent a broader deal on immigration.