As the shutdown clock ran deeper, Democrats defended their blockade of government funding, saying they tried to strike a deal but found an impossible partner in President Trump.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said he offered the president two major concessions in a meeting Friday, promising the border wall and support for more than the Pentagon’s full budget request in exchange for a generous pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Mr. Schumer said Mr. Trump appeared open to the deal in person, but later called back to add more demands on immigration that Mr. Schumer said he couldn’t stomach.
“Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O. That’s why this will be called the Trump shutdown,” Mr. Schumer said.
The New York Democrat led most of his party and a handful of Republicans in mounting a filibuster Friday to block a four-week spending bill. The legislation had cleared the House and Mr. Trump had said he would sign it, but under pressure from immigrant-rights groups, Democrats had said they wouldn’t approve anything without citizenship rights for illegal immigrant “Dreamers” included.
Mr. Schumer complained that the four-week bill was written only by Republicans and dropped onto Democrats’ laps in take-it-or-leave-it “bullying” fashion.
“We are happy and eager to compromise, but we will not be bullied,” he said.
His GOP counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said Mr. Schumer was blaming everyone but himself.
“The American people see right through all this bluster,” he said.
He said Mr. Schumer appeared to have miscalculated and ended up with a shutdown he didn’t actually want.
“Senate Democrats are starting to realize all this. They are starting to realize that their constituents, the president, the House, and a majority in the Senate are on one side of this. On the other side, all alone, is their Democratic Leader, who invented this unfortunate hostage situation and has led his party into this untenable position,” Mr. McConnell said.
Neither side sounded particularly optimistic about a path forward.
The White House has said it won’t negotiate on immigration as long as the government is shut down. That’s similar to the position President Barack Obama took in 2013, when he refused to talk Obamacare as long as the GOP was leading a shutdown. The strategy worked for Mr. Obama.
Mr. Schumer showed no sign of relenting Saturday, warning that “this Trump shutdown could go on longer than anybody wants it to.”
One key deal-maker, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, has suggested a 20-day “continuing resolution,” known inside the Capitol as a “CR,” to get the government back open, with a promise the Senate will debate immigration next month.
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said a firm immigration deal must come first.
“I have said, and I say it again, that we are willing to go to a short-term CR if, in fact, we have come to a conclusion, an agreement, on parity, which is important to us … we come to agreement on an outline for DACA and border security,” she said.
“Now, it won’t be all spelled out because we’re not writing appropriations bills, but we’re saying these are the terms under which we will task the appropriations committee to write the bills. Then there’s reason to have a CR.”
While most Democrats acknowledged the shutdown was fueled by Dreamers, Mrs. Pelosi said her party was seeking a number of other concessions from Republicans as well.
She said they want to see a boost in spending on a long list of domestic priorities, and said the GOP was refusing to agree.
“My view, and what I see, is fear in their eyes of their own caucus because their own caucus doesn’t want to… have the parity in terms of domestic increases as we have defense increases,” she said.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Democrats were breaking their own standards in shutting the government down, pointing to Mr. Schumer’s words during the 2013 shutdown when he blasted the GOP for holding funding hostage to their partisan Obamacare fight.
Mr. Ryan said: “Here is something else Senator Schumer said in 2013: ’I believe in immigration reform. What if I persuaded my caucus to say, ’I’m going to shut the government down, I am going to not pay our bills unless I get my way?’ It’s a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis.”
Mr. Schumer said this shutdown is different because the Obamacare battle wasn’t popular with the public, while he said granting Dreamers legal status is popular.
Polls do find the vast majority of voters back legal status for Dreamers — though they do not support a shutdown as a strategy to get it done.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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