During negotiations over a year-end spending bill, Trump Threatens a Government Shutdown if he does not get his wall.
President Trump sparred in public with top Democrats on Tuesday, declaring he would shut down the U.S. government if the Congress doesn’t fund his proposed border wall, an indication that negotiations over a year-end spending bill would continue without an imminent resolution.
Mr. Trump’s willingness to assume responsibility for a partial government shutdown defied congressional Republicans’ intention to blame the Democrats if it happens. A physical wall at the border with Mexico, a central item in the president’s agenda and rallying-cry for his base, has emerged as the biggest sticking point in the negotiations.
“If we don’t get what we want one way or another, whether it’s through you, through the military, through whatever you want to call, I will shut down the government,” Mr. Trump told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) in the Oval Office.
“I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck.”
Oval Office Debate
The debate is amusing or pathetic, depending in your point of view.
The video is below. Start at about the five minute mark. Pelosi repeatedly moans about the debate being in public. Then Trump gets into it with Schumer at the end.
Play the final 11 minutes and watch the discussion go straight downhill.
After the meeting Schumer told the press: “We gave the president two ways, each of which will get a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate and will avoid a shutdown. We hope he’ll take it because a shutdown hurts too many innocent people.”
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Chuck the Schmuck couldn’t even look at Donald.
For some reason, which I don’t know, neither party wants a solution to the illegal immigration issue. It couldn’t be simpler. Allow those into the US, to become a citizen, that will work and pay taxes and bar them from collecting welfare benefits for a set period of time. For those already here if they are working with no criminal records and not collecting welfare make a reasonable pathway for citizenship. Secure the border. I don’t know if a wall is the best way although it sounds like it is. I hope that idea has been thoroughly vetted and thought out. But this could all be fixed in one step. I believe most citizens would find this an agreeable solution but for some reasons the assholes in DC just put on a dog and pony show and bicker and do nothing.
You have it backwards. Secure the border first. Allow workers in limited numbers depending on their skills and job placement. They go back to their country of origin to apply for legal entry and path to citizenship after an agreed period of time, say 5 years with a clean record of working and paying taxes. No citizenship, no welfare, no anchor babies and NO VOTE until then. To hell with paying for and raising a crop of Democrats.
I’m sympathetic to your proposal, and would favor something like it if it had any chance of passing Congress. It doesn’t. It couldn’t even get passed when Republicans controlled Congress. You are simply voting for the status quo if these are your demands.
I want border security, and am willing to negotiate the status of people who aren’t going anywhere anyway to get it.
How about guest worker visas? What countries give out free citizenships to illegal immigrants today?
Just pathetic. Not amusing. As usual, King Chaos puts on the biggest show. Easy to do, if unburdened by facts. Nancy protests against the spotlight. Then elbows her way into it. Chuck makes his stand too. One of them SHOULD have said: “When Mexico pays for the wall, it will be built”. The ONLY thing that IS clear now is: if there is a govt. shutdown, King Chaos proudly proclaimed it so.
Congress isn’t going to pay for the wall with our tax money. Donald needs to get that money from Mexico, like he said he would. I’m beginning to think maybe he doesn’t want a wall at all.
Whenever Trump mentions “THE WALL”, why doesn’t someone ask him if he was familiar with the Great Wall in China? And then remind him that it was built to keep the Mongols out of the Chinese mainland but failed miserably. And the Great Wall it is a LOT BIGGER than anything Trump wants to build.
It failed because of a military invasion. Not people sneaking into China. And it did work for hundreds of years.
Do you know about the border wall Israel built to keep out illegal immigrants, jojo? It worked, just as intended, and none of the dummycrats have complained about that.
Solution is simple. It will actually save us trillions. Call back all military. Set up a 1km buffer zone with pill boxes every 500 meters(or whatever proper military strategy calls for). No wall. No trillions spent policing the world. Problem solved. For those illegals who fly in(which is the most common method), require sponsors to vouch for them, i.e. family members in the US or back home, then imprison them/strip them of all possessions when their visitors go awol.
WALL, WALL, WALL. Even if this wall gets built it will fail. Like all things by the government, IT WILL GUARANTEED FAIL. All this wall talk is merely a point of strife getting us nowhere and dividing us even more.
Hmm not so simple if the legalities of this are a consideration: “require sponsors to vouch for them”
The only way to do that legally would be to require that of all visitors . . . seeing as how most tourists have no sponsors they could no longer enter the country . . . bye bye tourist industry . . .
Of course the upside would be that people actually living in the US could visit the national parks with being mobbed . . .
If one wants stop ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION there is a simple solution but ignored conveniently by the authorities and the lawmakers for years if not decades!
FINE and jail, those employers who employ those illegals. NO JOBS, no illegal immigration!
Rest is hypocrisy and hogwash!
Spot on – a couple of perp walks of CEOs of large organizations and a warning that no business is too small to be shut down over hiring illegals and the problem disappears overnight.
With all the illegals working for him you can start with Trump, no one more high profile than that.
Bingo. These are the same folks that finance the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts at lobbying for open borders.
These are people who support the principles of America only as long as they can profit from them. They’re untethered by any sense of joint citizenship because they’re really only nominally American. They smirk at notions of loyalty to country as being terribly naive and unsophisticated.
In truth, they have more affinity for their local Trader Joe’s and hipster craft beers than they do for the large swaths of blue collar Americans who might be damaged by their actions.
It’s basically Mish’s demographic
I profit mainly by betting NEGATIVE on the mkt. All these dog fights will help me to achieve my object. So go on and help the the Global RESET to continue!
And the wall is just once so if the cost is calculated over 10 years it is just under 0.05% of the yearly federal budget.
The price for Trump wall on the whole US border is 25 billion.
18 billion is the actual wall everywhere and the rest is surveillance and extra personnel.
This is LESS than 0.5% of US federal budget.
I hope Trump gets his 25 billion since shutting down the government for 5 billion would be stupid.
Also those saying the wall needs to be built only on parts of US border with Mexico are inhumane and disgusting people that want migrants to die.
Already migrants are dying in the desert areas since they go where there is no wall and no surveillance and about 100 bodies have been found recently.
The wall needs to be on the whole US-Mexico border and it needs to be unpenetrable so migrants stay home or go work in Mexican factories.
This is Trump at his best. He forced these two losers to debate in public. It’s called transparency and these DemonRats hate it.
I’m not really seeing the Republican Party as a going concern after another 2 years like this. I think they’re going to be forced to turn on Trump to save what’s left of their party.
Without a wall and without stopping the birthright citizenship scam and without stopping the massive chain migration of over 1 million people a year the Republicans will never run USA EVER AGAIN in about 10 years.
The optics of a”government shutdown” are terrible for the big government stateists: Most Americans won’t even notice it is happening!
Govt shutdown for my neighbors is party time, cry about going back, get paid for the missed time when they get back, yeah that’s hurting.
Whenever there’s a shutdown, the essential personnel still have to go to work, but they’re limited in what they can work on. It has to be support of a critical system. They can’t do any new work. Just maintain existing things. And most of what they maintain are things used by non essential personnel who aren’t at work. So they sit around and do nothing for the most part. Essential personnel are almost entirely contractors while non essential are almost entirely gov’t employees. The gov’t employees get the days off and get paid for those days off. Free vacation for them.
I thought all agencies other than Homeland Security already had full year funding, so wouldn’t it just be a partial shutdown of 1 agency? Second question, we already spend $15-$25B a year enforcing the border and immigration laws, how much is enough?
Wall is just 25 billion ONCE so it would the most cost effective solution.
Also the wall obviously needs surveillance too and increased checks at ports of entry so personnel would be still needed but wall is the most cost effective way to stop the illegal migration.
Only 1/3 of illegals cross the southern border so even if the wall is effective, which is will not be, you are still left with a lot of people who stay past their visas.
This is great comedy what spectacle.