Senate leaders eye large spending package after White House softens stance on wall

Senate leaders are considering a large, long-term spending package now that the White House has signaled it may back off demands that Congress provide $5 billion for a border wall.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) hosted a meeting of Senate leaders Tuesday morning after the White House indicated a possible end to the spending standoff.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told reporters after the meeting that the leaders are trying to reach a deal to increase funding for federal agencies covered by the seven unfinished appropriations bills.

{mosads}Senators would prefer to complete the congressional appropriations process, one of McConnell’s top goals at the start of 2018, instead of passing a two-week, monthlong or yearlong continuing resolution funding about 25 percent of the government.

“What we’re working on now is on how to get all of the stuff funded. The clock’s ticking,” Shelby told reporters after meeting with McConnell, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

McConnell proposed including the bipartisan Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year, in the overall package. The DHS measure would provide $1.6 billion for border fencing, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

The GOP leader also proposed including a $1 billion fund for the administration to use on immigration-related matters, the Democratic aide said.

A spokesman for McConnell said the proposed $1 billion immigration fund would not be used for border fencing.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), emerging from a meeting in Schumer’s office later on Tuesday, told reporters that the GOP offer is unacceptable.

Democrats want President Trump to freeze border fencing funding at $1.3 billion, the amount Congress appropriated for 2018.

{mossecondads}No one from the administration participated in the meeting.

Shelby said there is a “strong hope” for a deal but at the moment “it may be a fluid situation — how fluid we don’t know.”

“I’ll feel better when things are concrete,” he said. “Right now there are a lot of ideas are floating around.”

Shelby said a smaller spending package to complete the seven unfinished appropriations bills is “still in play.” 

“The goal is to try to wrap it up. That’s the ideal. That’s what we’re working on,” Shelby said.

“I think the White House is looking like we are to figure out how we can get to yes,” he added. “My yes is to fund these bills.”

Shelby said leaders could move a package of judicial nominees in tandem with the spending bill, which would give Trump more incentive to support the deal.

A spokesman for Schumer, however, said “judges were neither mentioned nor discussed in the meeting.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday said the president wants to avoid a partial government shutdown that would begin on Saturday if spending legislation isn’t signed into law.

“At the end of the day we don’t want to shut down the government, we want to shut down the border from illegal immigration,” she told Fox News.

Sanders confirmed that the White House is looking for alternative ways to fund Trump’s $5 billion border request, such as reprograming defense funds.

“Some people say he has that power. He has the power to defend the country. He has the power to protect the borders. I think that would be inherent in the Constitution,” Shelby said. “As far as the specifics, I haven’t seen the specifics.”

Shelby and Leahy, the two most senior members of the Appropriations Committee, said it’s uncertain whether Trump has that legal authority without sign-off from Congress.

Leahy said Trump’s ability to reprogram funding “depends on the nature of it.”

Schumer said he’s waiting to see what exactly McConnell has in mind.

“We’re talking. It was very broad. We’re waiting to see the details,” he told reporters after emerging from the meeting with Senate leaders.

Sanders said the president has several options.

“There’s certainly a number of different funding sources that we’ve identified that we can use that we can couple with the money that would be given through congressional appropriations that would help us get to that $5 billion that the president needs in order to protect our borders,” she told Fox News.

Jordain Carney and Niv Elis contributed.

Updated at 1:13 p.m.