According to Politico, efforts by Senate Democrats and Republicans to help end the government shutdown on Monday may already be in danger. That’s because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) withdrew his party’s offer to help boost funding for President Trump‘s long-touted border wall proposal with an additional $1.6 billion. Officials and congressional aides familiar with the exchange, which took place later on Monday, are now saying that “Trump will simply not get a better deal than that.”
Schumer’s second-in-command, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), told Politico that the New York Democrat “took it off” the table with the White House. “He called the White House yesterday and said it’s over,” he added. Another aide noted that, thanks to Trump’s behavior (or lack thereof) throughout the three-day government shutdown, the president had essentially “missed an opportunity to get the wall” he’d been promising his base since the beginning of the presidential campaign. Seeing as how many GOP lawmakers had only agreed to end the government shutdown due to Schumer’s initial offer, some worry the events of this past weekend will repeat themselves in three weeks.
Meanwhile, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley denied the validity of Schumer’s deal withdrawal during a subsequent appearance on Fox News. “[Schumer] taking away ‘funding’ for the wall is like me telling your viewers I’m going to rescind my offer to give them all a million dollars personally,” he said. “It never existed. I don’t even have that kind of money, and at this point, Sen. Schumer doesn’t even have a leg to stand on.”
(Via Politico)