Trump, Democrats show no signs of breaking impasse with shutdown hours away

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and Congress were locked in an impasse Friday over Trump's border wall, hours away from a partial government shutdown and with no apparent path to prevent one.

Trump's preferred solution - a stopgap spending bill containing $5.7 billion for a Mexico border wall - faced near-certain defeat in the Senate, even after the president pressured Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to change Senate rules to allow it to pass.

McConnell refused.

'We're going to be working very hard to get something passed in the Senate,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office before a bill-signing. 'Now it's up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown tonight. I hope we don't but we've very much prepared for a long shutdown.”

The $5.7 billion border wall and stopgap spending bill passed the House Thursday night, in a last gasp for Republicans there before they turn their majority over to Democrats in January.

But on Wednesday night, the Senate had passed a short-term spending bill to keep the government running through Feb. 8 without paying for Trump's wall. Lawmakers had expected Trump to sign that measure, but the president abruptly changed his mind in the face of a vicious backlash from conservative lawmakers and commentators.

That turnabout provoked frustration among senators Friday, since lawmakers of both parties acknowledge Democrats have the votes to follow through on their vow to block the $5.7 billion in border funding from passing the Senate.

'This is tyranny of talk radio hosts, right? And so, how do you deal with that?” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. 'You have two talk radio hosts who completely flipped the president. And so, do we succumb to tyranny of talk radio hosts?”

Still, after meeting with Trump at the White House, McConnell called a vote aimed at advancing the $5.7 billion border wall bill, saying the legislation would not be considered controversial in more normal times.

'I'm proud to vote for it,” McConnell said.

But it was unclear if the legislation was going to advance past an initial procedural hurdle - and even if it did so, the 60 votes needed for final passage were out of reach.

Nonetheless, the procedural vote took on the air of a cliffhanger Friday as senators of both parties waited and watched to see if it could obtain the majority vote needed to advance in a Senate split 51-49 between Republicans and Democrats. Failure of the procedural motion would kill the legislation on the spot - and if that happened it would be because of defections from lawmakers of the president's own party.

The vote had to be held open for hours as senators hurried back to the Capitol from their home states and other locations they had traveled after Wednesday night's vote, on the belief that their work was done for the year.

As the hours ticked by, intense negotiations ensued. Retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., voted 'no,” the first Republican to do so. Democrats were pressuring Corker to do the same, and all eyes were on him because, under the math of the Senate, a 'no” vote from Corker would likely kill Trump's border bill.

First, Corker huddled with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats on the Senate floor. Then he said 'let me go listen to the other side,” and headed out of the chamber to talk with Republicans.

Tension hung over the Capitol, four days before Christmas, with a partial government shutdown hours away, and Republicans in their last gasp of full control over Washington. As the GOP prepared to relinquish its majority in the House, the party was deeply divided, and partisan rifts with Democrats were growing ever more bitter.

In a spate of morning tweets, Trump sought to pin blame on Democrats for a potential shutdown even though he said last week that he would proudly own one if lawmakers did not provide at least $5 billion toward his marquee campaign promise.

'The Democrats, whose votes we need in the Senate, will probably vote against Border Security and the Wall even though they know it is DESPERATELY NEEDED,” Trump wrote. 'If the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last for a very long time. People don't want Open Borders and Crime!”

After Trump threatened Thursday to veto the Senate measure that did not contain the border funding he sought, the House hurried to appease the president, pulling together the bill that would keep the government funded through Feb. 8 while also allocating $5.7 billion for the border wall and nearly $8 billion for disaster relief for hurricanes and wildfires.

But Democrats showed no signs of relenting.

During a floor speech Friday, Schumer noted that the Senate had unanimously agreed to a spending bill earlier in the week and accused Trump of having a 'temper tantrum.”

'President Trump, you will not get your wall,” Schumer said. 'You're not getting your wall today, next week or on Jan. 3 when Democrats take control of the House.”

In a contentious Oval Office meeting last week with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Trump said he would be 'proud to shut down the government for border security.”

'So I will take the mantle,” he said. 'I will be the one to shut it down. I won't blame you for it.”

'The Democrats now own the shutdown!” Trump insisted in one of his Friday morning tweets.

In other tweets Friday, Trump urged McConnell to 'fight for the Wall and Border Security as hard as he fought for anything.”

Trump also urged McConnell to 'use the Nuclear Option and get it done!”

That was a reference to a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. Trump was advocating that McConnell change the rule so that only 51 votes are required. By doing that, Republicans would be able to pass a bill without Democratic cooperation in a chamber in which Republicans hold 51 seats.

But a McConnell spokesman soon put out a statement making clear that wouldn't happen.

'The Leader has said for years that the votes are not there in the Conference to use the nuclear option,” said McConnell spokesman David Popp. 'Just this morning, several Senators put out statements confirming that there is not a majority in the conference to go down that road.”

For more than a year, Trump has tried to pressure McConnell to change Senate rules in a way that would allow the chamber to pass legislation with a simple majority.

During the Obama administration, when Democrats controlled the Senate, Democrats changed the rules to allow most presidential nominees to advance with a simple majority of votes. During the beginning of the Trump administration, McConnell extended this practice to the nomination of Supreme Court justices, which proved crucial because both of Trump's nominees to the nation's highest court won approval by a narrow margin.

But McConnell has resisted such a change for legislation, as have a number of other Republicans, worried about the precedent it would set.

In his tweets, Trump also sought to counter Democratic arguments that a border wall is an antiquated strategy for curbing illegal border crossings.

'The Democrats are trying to belittle the concept of a Wall, calling it old fashioned,” Trump wrote. 'The fact is there is nothing else's that will work, and that has been true for thousands of years. It's like the wheel, there is nothing better.”

'Properly designed and built Walls work, and the Democrats are lying when they say they don't,” the president added.

Trump's Twitter attacks came as a number of federal agencies were in the final stages of implementing their shutdown plans.

A number of federal parks and monuments are slated to close, some as soon as Saturday morning. The Securities and Exchange Commission posted a list of the services it will soon suspend, including the processing of certain business records. The Justice Department, Commerce Department and Internal Revenue Service are preparing to send thousands of people home without pay.

And Trump's prediction that a shutdown would last 'for a very long time” means that more than 100,000 federal employees risk missing at least one paycheck, and possibly more. Even the Border Patrol agents and Transportation Security Agency officials who are directed to continue working during the shutdown will not be paid until Congress funds their agencies.

About 480,000 federal workers would be furloughed, according to a Washington Post projection, even though some 75 percent of the federal government including the Pentagon have been funded through September and would remain open.

There were signs that some federal agencies were still making last-minute changes to their shutdown plans, adding to the confusion among federal workers.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sent an email to employees on Friday morning declaring that the agency was still 'working to update our contingency plans for executing an orderly shutdown of activities.”

Department of Homeland Security officials told reporters Friday that the $5 billion in funds would cover roughly 215 miles of new wall construction in California, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico. In some cases, they would need private land owners to sell property to the federal government for the wall's construction. If the property owner refuses, the government would consider seizing the property under eminent domain, a controversial tactic that would likely tie the project up in court for years.

- - -

The Washington Post's Seung Min Kim, Erica Werner and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.