As this weekend dawned, the federal government partially shut down over a lack of approved funding. President Donald Trump has sought $5 billion for his border wall — which is now supposed to be made of steel slats, apparently — and Democrats have adamantly refused to get on board with that proposal. POLITICO reports that even Vice President Mike Pence tried to help work out a deal between Republicans and Democrats as Friday night got ever closer, but his efforts came up short.
The issue looming over the whole debacle was and remains the uncertainty about what funding provisions Trump would actually sign. This past week, the House and Senate came up with a funding package that did not include appropriations for Trump’s border wall but kept the government open until February — but the president refused to sign it.
Friday, lower level GOP Senators including Colorado’s Cory Gardner and Georgia’s David Perdue got directly in touch with the White House over their concern about how the negotiations — or lack thereof — were proceeding. Their efforts got Pence involved along with Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, but none of them could come up with something the president would sign and Congress could approve before the Friday night deadline.
Their failure isn’t for lack of trying, however, since the group of administration officials reportedly went from corner to corner of the Capitol, meeting with Senators from both sides of the aisle and House Republicans in an effort to find something the bodies could pass that the president would approve.
Although Pence is hardly a nobody, his hands were especially tied since he’d previously insisted to Congressional leaders that the president would sign the spending package they’d presented him with earlier in the week. He didn’t, and now hundreds of thousands of government workers are either working without pay or indefinitely out of the job and a number of government services are on their way out.
After the initial presidential rejection of Congress’ funding package, the House passed a measure that did include the border wall funding Trump wanted although any funding package would need the support of a number of Senate Democrats to proceed. Friday night, both bodies adjourned without the package ever having even been presented for a final vote in the Senate, although Senators did eventually vote to open debate.
Gardner and Perdue are optimistic about the outcome of their efforts to get Pence and other administration officials involved — but the government is still partially closed. It’s the third shutdown of the Trump presidency. Trump has repeatedly, including in connection to the president debacle, insisted that he’d be happy to have the government shut down in the name of his agenda — and he’s made good on that, even if it means leaving his own vice president out in the cold.
The whole meltdown is one of many issues the Trump administration will have to face heading into the 2020 elections. Trump has quipped he’d have Pence as his running mate again but hasn’t seemingly made it official.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
