Republican senators reject Trump's plan to 'go nuclear' over wall-funding dilemma

U.S. President Donald Trump conceded on Friday there was a good chance the Senate would not approve his demand for $5 billion toward funding his border wall project and that there would probably would be a government shutdown beginning at midnight.

Before meeting with Senate Republicans at the White House, Trump had written on Twitter that “Democrats now own the shutdown,” despite having said last week that he would be “proud” to shut down the government over the issue of border security and “I’ll be the one to shut it down.”

“If the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last for a very long time,” he said in another tweet before meeting with Republican senators.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer refused to take the blame.

“President Trump, you own the shutdown,” he said on the Senate floor. “You said so in your own words.”

After the White House meeting, Trump said there was a good chance a bill with wall funding would be defeated in the Senate and that a shutdown was likely.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged the Senate to pass the bill approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday that would give Trump $5 billion toward building the wall on the Mexican border - one of the major themes of his presidency.

There still appeared to be little chance senators would go along with the House bill as they began procedural votes on whether to even consider it.

Republican Senator Bob Corker bluntly said, “The $5 billion is not going to pass.”

The Senate, where Republicans have only a 51-49 majority, already had approved funds for the government through Feb. 8 in hopes of avoiding a partial government shutdown but without money for the wall. On Thursday Trump pushed fellow Republicans in the House to use the short-term funding bill as leverage to force through the border wall money despite Democratic objections.

In a series of early-morning tweets on Friday, Trump urged McConnell to take up the amended bill from the House. He also called on McConnell to use the “nuclear option” to force a Senate vote on legislation with a simple majority, rather than the standard “supermajority” of 60 votes. But there was not enough support among Republican senators to do so.

The threat of a U.S. government shutdown, which would leave thousands of federal workers idled at Christmas, continued to fuel investor anxieties on Friday over the trajectory of global economic growth as world stocks extended a steep sell-off.

TENSE TIMES

The showdown added to tensions in Washington as lawmakers also grappled with Trump’s sudden move to pull troops from Syria, which prompted Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to resign, and furthered concerns over the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election that Trump won.

Three-quarters of government programs are fully funded through the end of the federal fiscal year next Sept. 30, including those in the Defense Department, Labor Department and Health and Human Services.

But funding for other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the Agriculture Department, is set to expire at midnight on Friday.

If the House measure is put to a vote in the Senate, Democrats have pledged to deny it passage. It remained unclear what would happen if the House measure fails there.

A partial government shutdown could begin, with affected agencies limiting staff to those deemed “essential” to public safety. Such critical workers, including U.S. border agents, and nonessential employees would not get paid until the dispute ends. National parks also would close unless the government declares them essential.

Trump upends plan to avert federal shutdown

Alternatively, lawmakers could seek a solution that Trump finds acceptable, although it was unclear what that would be.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump was “not going to back down on this fight” and would stay in Washington rather than go to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for the holidays as planned.

Asked how long any potential shutdown would last, Sanders said: “Let’s hope that that doesn’t have to happen.”

Trump’s border wall was a key campaign promise in the 2016 election, when he said it would be paid for by Mexico, and sees it as a winning issue for his 2020 re-election campaign.

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Coons on Friday said he hoped Trump would change course and support the Senate-passed bill, which includes funds for border security but not specifically for the wall.

“This is a fight more over message and the president trying to fulfill a campaign promise rather than substance,” Coons told CNN in an interview on Friday.

Reporting by Richard Cowan, Ginger Gibson, Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Jonathan Oatis