President Trump during an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday said that he is doubtful Congress can come to a deal over border wall funding, claiming that another government shutdown is “certainly an option” once the three-week funding bill comes to an end.
Trump expressed skepticism that a group of 17 lawmakers assembled to agree on a deal could achieve a bipartisan resolution.
{mosads}“I personally think it’s less than 50-50, but you have a lot of very good people on that board,” Trump told the Journal.
Trump during the interview said that another shutdown is “certainly an option,” days after he signed a continuing resolution temporarily ending the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history on day 35.
Trump said he is doubtful that he would accept a deal that does not include the $5.7 billion in border wall funding that he has demanded, which Democrats have refused.
“I doubt it,” Trump said when asked whether he would accept a deal without the more than $5 billion. “I have to do it right.”
Trump also said he doubts he would accept a deal that traded the border wall funding in exchange for citizenship for a group of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children, known as Dreamers.
A group of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle has been tasked with hammering out a deal that addresses the polarizing issues of immigration and border security. The group of 17 lawmakers is led by House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and will meet for the first time this week.
“I’m going to remain optimistic,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of the group, said on Sunday, according to the Journal. “If you look at the impetus from both sides, the shutdown was a miserable experience for everybody.”
“There’s a lot that tells me we may not get there, but there’s more that’s telling me we have the urge to demonstrate we can reach a consensus or we’re signaling to the American people there’s going to be two years of this [fighting] all of the time,” Capito said.
Trump has indicated he will use his emergency powers to declare a national emergency to construct a wall along the southern border if Congress does not come to an agreement over the next few weeks.