| Trump Warns Shutdown Could Last 'Very Long Time,' Urges McConnell to Go 'Nuclear' and End Filibuster |
| Friday, 21 December 2018 13:35 |
|
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump on Friday said the chances of a partial government shutdown were 'very good' after meeting with Senate Republicans at the White House."
Trump Warns Shutdown Could Last 'Very Long Time,' Urges McConnell to Go 'Nuclear' and End Filibuster21 December 18
He called the meeting with GOP lawmakers "great," and said, "Now it's up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown tonight." He earlier warned Senate Democrats that if they don't vote for his border wall, there will be a "very long" government shutdown beginning Friday night. And he pressured Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to use the "nuclear option," which would end the right to filibuster legislation in the Senate and allow the bill to pass with a simple majority.
The "nuclear option" refers to a last-resort way for the majority party in the Senate to overcome objection by the minority, and it involves using a simple majority of 51 votes rather than 60. McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor after the meeting with Trump, voiced support for the House-passed bill with the $5 billion in border wall funding and what he called “much-needed investments in disaster relief for hard-hit communities.” “I support the additional border security and disaster aid that the House added to the bill and I’m proud to vote for it,” he said. “Let's advance this legislation,” he said, just before the Senate began voting on a motion to proceed. This vote only needs a simple majority, and will start proceedings on the bill, but is not the key vote that requires 60 votes to advance the legislation. McConnell signaled earlier that he was unwilling to cave on the issue of the filibuster. "The Leader has said for years that the votes are not there in the Conference to use the nuclear option. Just this morning, several Senators put out statements confirming their opposition, and confirming that there is not a majority in the conference to go down that road," McConnell's spokesman, David Popp, said in a statement. Multiple Republican senators said on Friday that they don't support doing away with the legislative filibuster. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is retiring this month after serving four decades in the Senate, recalled his long history of using and supporting the filibuster to great effect. Hatch's Twitter account flashed back to 1978, and tweeted a quote from him speaking in 2016: "I'm one of the biggest advocates for the filibuster," he said. "It's the only way to protect the minority, and we've been in the minority a lot more than we've been in the majority. It's just a great, great protection for the minority."
"The Senate filibuster is about the only mechanism left in Washington that brings the parties together. Deploying the nuclear option would blow that up," retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said on Twitter. "I will not vote to do it." Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who recently announced he won't run for re-election in 2020, also vowed not to vote for such a change. "We are a nation that prizes the rule of law. How can we expect Americans to follow the rules when their number one rule making institution, the U.S. Senate, will not follow its own rules?" he said in a statement. "We have rules to follow. I want to put a stop to this practice of the Senate breaking its rules to change its rules. I will not vote to turn the Senate into a rule-breaking institution and I hope that my colleagues will not." McConnell said in May 2017 that triggering the "nuclear option" in order to pass legislation was "not going to happen" because doing so would fundamentally change how the Senate operates. The new stopgap spending measure, which passed the House on Thursday night by a 217-185 vote, includes more than $5 billion for the president's long-promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., a member of the Appropriations Committee, suggested in a tweet shortly after the House vote that the Senate eliminate the right to filibuster legislation in order to pass the bill — a notion Trump thanked him for on Twitter Friday.
But the measure's odds in the Senate are low as the shutdown deadline looms. Parts of the government are set to run out of operating authority after Friday, and Trump warned in a tweet that "if the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last for a very long time." Schumer indicated Friday that he hadn't talked to the president. When asked if he was optimistic about the outcome of the White House meeting between Trump and GOP lawmakers, he said, "Every meeting with Republicans and the president, things have gotten worse." Schumer said there are three offers on the table for Trump that would avert a shutdown — one that came from Schumer, and others that came from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "He ought to take one of them," he said. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Friday that the White House should have just told lawmakers directly that it opposed the Senate's version of a short-term spending bill — which did not include $5 billion in border wall funding — before "we wasted time voting on it" on Wednesday. It's not about the wall, Rubio said on Twitter, but how Democrats are denying the president "a win."
In his tweets Friday morning, Trump placed the blame for a shutdown solely on Democrats, despite saying in a highly unusual public spat with Schumer and Pelosi last week that he would "take the mantle" of a government shutdown if Congress didn't give him funds for the border wall he vowed Mexico would pay for. When asked by reporters on Friday why the president is now labeling the possible shutdown a "Democratic shutdown," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said only: "The House has passed it. The president supports it. We have legislation on the floor that everybody should be behind." Pelosi responded on Twitter with a video clip of Trump vowing to shut down the government in their meeting last week. — Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) December 21, 2018 "I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it," Trump told the Democratic leaders.  |
| Last Updated on Friday, 21 December 2018 14:26 |
resident Donald Trump on Friday said the chances of a partial government shutdown were "very good" after meeting with Senate Republicans at the White House.