Trump wants Senate to use ‘nuclear option’ to pass border wall funding bill as government shutdown looms

WASHINGTON – With a midnight deadline fast approaching, Congress and the White House have just hours to resolve a budget impasse or risk shutting down parts of the federal government for the third time this year.

The Senate is expected to vote Friday afternoon on a short-term spending measure that would keep the government running through early next year and would include $5 billion that President Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the nation’s southern border.

Amid a series of shutdown-related tweets Friday morning, Trump urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to adopt the “nuclear option” – basically eliminating the filibuster rule and enabling the budget plan to pass with a simple majority. As it stands now, Republicans need 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

While McConnell and others have supported the nuclear option for judicial nominations and other presidential appointments, they have opposed its use for policy matters.

Trump also blasted Democrats ahead of any Senate action and was already blaming them for any future government shutdown, which he warned could “last a very long time.”

“The Democrats, whose votes we need in the Senate, will probably vote against Border Security and the Wall even though they know it is DESPERATELY NEEDED,” he wrote via Twitter. “If the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last for a very long time. People don’t want Open Borders and Crime!”

More: After chaotic day, Donald Trump defends wall plan and warns of lengthy government shutdown

But Democrats have insisted they won’t give Trump the money, raising serious doubts about the bill’s passage.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday that Democrats have no intention of budging from their position that there will be no border wall funding. He accused Republicans of inserting the funding into the spending bill just to appease Trump, even though they know it will fail in the Senate.

“The bottom line is simple,” Schumer said. “The Trump temper tantrum will shut down the government, but it will not get him his wall.”

Lawmakers have until midnight Friday to pass a spending bill or funding will expire for a quarter of the federal government, trigging a shutdown heading into the holidays and forcing some 800,000 federal employees to go on furlough or work without pay.

More: What will be interrupted if there is a government shutdown going into holidays

Congress is trying to end the budget stalemate and avert a government shutdown by piecing together a short-term measure that would keep the funds flowing through early next year.

But the chances of a government shutdown jumped dramatically on Thursday when the House ignored a funding bill passed by the Senate a day earlier and approved its own spending measure.

The Senate proposal, offered by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would have funded the government through Feb. 8 but would have delayed any decision on border wall funding until next year.

But after Trump informed House GOP leaders during an emergency Oval Office meeting that he would not sign the Senate bill, the House responded by introducing its own spending package. The House bill would fund the government through Feb. 8 but also includes $5.7 billion for a border wall and nearly $8 billion in disaster relief to compensate communities hit hard by this year’s hurricanes and wildfires.

More: Trump’s border wall pledge may cost US taxpayers billions of dollars or result in government shutdown

“We want to keep the government open, but we also want to see an agreement that protects the border,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters following the White House meeting. “We have very serious concerns about securing our border.”

A deeply divided House later approved the package by a vote of 217-185, sending it back to the Senate and setting up Friday’s showdown.

Congress is scrambling to pass a short-term spending bill because lawmakers still haven’t passed seven of the 12 appropriations bills that are needed to fund the government for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

The seven remaining bills would fund nine departments – Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development – as well as several smaller agencies. Those are the departments and agencies that would be impacted by a government shutdown.

Last week, in an Oval Office meeting with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Trump said he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security.’

“I will take the mantle,” Trump told the top Democrats. “I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump wants Senate to use ‘nuclear option’ to pass border wall funding bill as government shutdown looms