Finger-pointing, profanity, even “poppycock.”
An overwhelming sense of frustration and despair has taken over Congress as lawmakers try to reach an agreement to end the nearly six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security as the previously scheduled recess approaches.
The funding framework that Republican senators hammered out with President Donald Trump on Monday now appears to be on life support, and the Senate has yet to sign a backup agreement that would end the impasse over immigration enforcement strategy blamed on the ongoing DHS shutdown, which is causing disruption to air travel as unpaid TSA screeners have stopped coming to work.
Trump has shown little interest in bringing the two sides together on a deal. At a dinner hosted by the House GOP campaign arm on Wednesday, with several lawmakers in attendance, Trump blamed Democrats for this, saying, DHS funding agreement with Republicans in recent weeks.
“Because they don’t want to compromise,” the president said. “They want anarchy.”
Underscoring the impasse, the Senate voted for the sixth time on Wednesday Package to fund all DHS.
“It looks like everyone’s going to be staring at each other for a while,” the Senate majority leader said. john thune on Wednesday, before nodding to lawmakers’ best hope of getting a deal — his strong desire to leave the city.
“You know what it’s like here, it’s not Thursday yet,” he said. “Sometimes you have to let things play out.”
Bipartisan talks continued late Wednesday, after lawmakers earlier in the day expressed growing frustration that recent progress had been reversed. The optimism that emerged during talks between the White House and Senate Democrats was replaced by raw emotions that had risen before last weekend and were further fueled by talks between the White House and GOP lawmakers on Monday.
Democrats say Republicans abruptly abandoned negotiations this week over new rules for immigration enforcement agents after two people were shot and killed by DHS officers in Minnesota in January.
“For Republicans now to act as if the Democrats have changed our position, as if we’ve moved the goalposts, is bad faith,” the Senate minority leader said. chuck schumer Said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “And for Republicans to send a proposal that contains no reforms is bad faith.”
Republicans, for their part, say Democrats aren’t willing to take yes for an answer — even if they proposed dropping ICE enforcement funding.
“I don’t know how they’re going to satisfy their rabid online political base,” Thune told reporters, “because that’s what it’s about.”
Lawmakers from both houses are scheduled to return home on Friday for a two-week recess during the Easter and Passover holidays. If Congress does not act by Saturday night, the DHS funding lapse would become the longest shutdown of any federal agency in U.S. history — longer than the 43-day government-wide shutdown that ended in November.
Thune is leaving the door open to keeping senators in Washington during or even recess. But Republicans are expected to have attendance issues in person as many of their colleagues walked out of a rare weekend session to work on a partisan elections bill.
One GOP senator, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, summed up his feelings: “I just want to go home.”
democratic senator peter welch Vermont described colleagues as “mutually tired”, adding that senators are “getting tired of each other.”
Thune floated the idea of recalling senators if he lets them and an agreement on DHS funding is reached after the Senate adjourns. But some of his own members fear that leaving the city would destroy any chance of momentum.
“I’m struggling to argue for leaving us until we get some of these things settled,” the senator said. Thom Tillis (R.N.C.) told reporters on Wednesday. “We have a lot of plates spinning. And I’m afraid that until we get some certainty about them, if we move, some of them will fall to the floor.”
Senate Republicans aren’t the only ones keeping an eye on the clock. A group of centrist House Democrats met with senators Wednesday morning. katie britt of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the Homeland Security funding panel. House lawmakers were feeling “anxious” and worried that their Senate Democratic counterparts were moving too slowly, according to a person who granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.
California representative. adam grayOne of the Democrats sitting with Britt said the House lawmakers wanted to “create a sense of urgency” among Senate negotiators and “encourage them to get to work on this.”
Gray said, “I don’t think we can all sit here. The American public is becoming increasingly frustrated.”
It’s not just his own program that senators are keeping a close eye on. With the Easter holidays approaching and spring breakers traveling across the country, lawmakers fear the situation at airports will worsen.
The head of the TSA told members of the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday that more than 480 screeners have walked off the job since the shutdown began more than five weeks ago, calling it “a dire situation” and warning of a “serious staffing shortage and the storm of an influx of millions of travelers” ahead of the World Cup games this summer.
Senate Democrats sent a counter-proposal to Republicans on Wednesday, but GOP leaders quickly dismissed it as non-serious.
Democrats are upset that the Republican framework does not include any changes to immigration enforcement, which both parties have been discussing since the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretty by DHS agents in Minneapolis. Those shootings united largely Democratic lawmakers to demand new rules, such as prohibiting immigration agents from wearing masks or entering homes without judicial warrants.
“We didn’t invent this out of thin air,” Connecticut Sen. chris murphythe top Democrat on the DHS funding panel told reporters Wednesday. “They brutally murdered two Americans. They are behaving illegally.”
Murphy said Democrats have made significant concessions to Republicans during weeks of negotiations, but some Republicans said Democrats have rejected deals and left out others that were outlined on the negotiating table. Under that framework, only DHS policy constraints agreed upon before the Minneapolis killings would be implemented, but would not include funding for ICE enforcement and removal efforts.
The senator said, this is why this proposal was put before Trump this week. john kennedy (R-La.) said in an interview in hopes of breaking the impasse.
Kennedy said, “The whole deal was based on Senator Schumer and our Democratic colleagues opening up everything else but ICE, and then we make a deal with ICE.” “And they have backed off from it.”
Riley Rogerson and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
