Pelosi challenges McConnell

Pelosi challenges McConnell with shutdown plan

Republicans are expected to reject the Democrats' proposal, which doesn't include a funding boost for Trump's wall.

By BURGESS EVERETT, SARAH FERRIS and HEATHER CAYGLE

Nancy Pelosi is trying to put Mitch McConnell in a bind over President Donald Trump's border wall — and leave the Senate GOP shouldering the blame for a government shutdown with no end in sight.

The presumptive House speaker, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, together announced plans on New Year’s Eve to pass bills funding the quarter of the government that's shut down since the president refused to sign any bill without big border security funding increases.

Pelosi’s new House Democratic majority will pass a legislative package delivering funding for nonimmigration enforcement departments that have shuttered during the impasse, plus a stop gap bill funding the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, which would only offer a short-term punt to the ongoing impasse over a border barrier.

Under McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate won’t pass the legislation without the support of the president, which is unlikely given Trump’s recent comments. On Monday night, Trump dismissed Pelosi’s gambit.

“The Democrats will probably submit a Bill, being cute as always, which gives everything away but gives NOTHING to Border Security, namely the Wall,” he said on Twitter.

That leaves Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Schumer (D-N.Y.), who are hoping to pin the political fallout from the shutdown on McConnell for declining to challenge the president. McConnell, like Trump, is up for reelection in 2020.

“The president is using the government shutdown to try to force an expensive and ineffective wall upon the American people, but Democrats have offered two bills which separate the arguments over the wall from the government shutdown,” the two Democratic leaders said. “If Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans refuse to support the [bill without DHS funding] then they are complicit with President Trump in continuing the Trump shutdown.”

A short-term spending bill passed the Senate by voice vote this month after both McConnell and Schumer endorsed it. Schumer and Pelosi said “it would be the height of irresponsibility and political cynicism for Senate Republicans to now reject the same legislation they have already supported.”

But Trump has said he wouldn’t sign it and the House never took it up, instead passing a bill with billions more for the border wall than Senate Democrats will support. The 115th Congress will now adjourn without a solution, and Pelosi will take the speaker’s gavel in the middle of a shutdown now on its 10th day.

Republicans dismissed the Democrats’ move as unproductive considering the widespread belief that Trump won’t sign anything shorts funding for his wall. He told Fox News in an interview airing Monday evening that “we are not giving up” on the fight, and signing on to Pelosi’s plan would be a massive cave to Democrats after his constant attacks on Pelosi and Schumer.

“They’re saying post-shutdown they don’t want a solution. They want to just punt everything and have the same impasse in February,” said a GOP aide familiar with ongoing spending negotiations. “Their bills aren’t drafted with bipartisan consultation. It’s just a political exercise for them.”

Pelosi’s plans put a new spotlight on McConnell, who along with other Senate Republicans believed that Trump would sign that short-term bill funding the government after meeting with Vice President Mike Pence. McConnell has largely withdrawn from the debate since then, succinctly taking to the floor after the shutdown began to declare the Senate won’t pass a spending bill that the president doesn’t support.

House Democrats intend to vote on the plan Thursday, the same day they officially take control of the House from Republicans. Pelosi did not confer with McConnell before making her move.

After the House passes the package, McConnell could then take up those bills and amend them and try and send them back to the House. He could also ignore them, or simply vote them down.

Democrats are hopeful there will be pressure from moderate Republicans to pass the package of non-DHS bills and isolate the shutdown to just the department tasked with patrolling the border.

Pelosi’s strategy is “designed to put Republicans on the spot,” a senior Democratic aide said, by using six of the Senate’s own spending bills, which already have broad support from both parties.

Trump tweeted that Democrats need to “come back from vacation now and give us the votes necessary for Border Security.” And Rep. Mark Meadows, a House conservative who is close with Trump, blasted the measure as a “nonstarter” on Monday afternoon.

“Nancy Pelosi’s newest funding proposal doesn’t represent any serious attempt to secure our border or find a compromise,” Meadows posted on Twitter.

Still, Democrats’ move breaks a stale debate over the shutdown and is an attempt to restart negotiations that have been remarkably lifeless since the shutdown began the weekend before Christmas. The House and Senate had pro forma sessions on Monday, and no updates were given by GOP leaders. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) opened and shut the Senate, then took a back route out of the Capitol as reporters waited for him.

With Trump unwilling to budge on his border funding demands, most lawmakers — including the top leaders — left town before Christmas while roughly 800,000 workers were either furloughed or forced to work without pay.

Trump is almost certain to reject the Democrats’ plan on Homeland Security, with his advisers demanding at least $2.1 billion for the border project in recent days.

But Democrats hope they can tempt McConnell, a former appropriator, to bring up the other massive funding package to dramatically shrink the effects of a federal shutdown.

The plan could carry political risks for the Democratic Party, though, which has been historically split on immigration policy. This week, House Democrats will be swearing in new members, some of whom want to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency altogether. Other wings of the party, such as unions, have been more skeptical of immigration reform.

Democrats’ plan also does not include several of the other must-pass items that House Democrats plan to tackle in the new year. That includes an extension of the Violence Against Women Act, which expired Dec. 21. It also will not include the billions of dollars in disaster aid that lawmakers from California, Florida and Alabama requested this fall to deal with wildfire and hurricane damage.

Pelosi plans to hold separate votes on those issues in the coming weeks, according to the House Democratic aide.