Nancy Pelosi tried another
cheap political stunt and Mitch McConnell was not having it. Look, at this
point, the two sides need to sit down and make a compromise.
All reports are that
Trump’s ask of $5 Billion is low and is really a down payment on the full
wall – and he may even take half that to get the funds officially allocated.
But the Democrats simply
refuse to do anything until Trump totally capitulates. He won’t so Pelosi’s
stunt to try to hurt Trump politically was just theater that thankfully Mitch
stopped cold.
From TheHill:
Senate Republicans blocked a
House-passed package to reopen the federal government for the second time in as
many weeks on Tuesday.
Democratic
Sens. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Ben Cardin (Md.) asked for consent to take up
a package of bills that would reopen the federal government.
One
bill would fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, while the
other would fund the rest of the impacted departments and agencies through
Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Under
Senate rules, any senator can ask for consent to vote on or pass a bill, but
any senator can object. McConnell blocked the two bills, saying the Senate
wouldn’t “participate in something that doesn’t lead to an outcome.”
McConnell
for weeks has said he would not bring legislation to the floor on the shutdown
unless there was a deal between President Trump and Democrats on border security,
the issue that has triggered the shutdown. McConnell has described other votes
as “show votes.”
“The
solution to this is a negotiation between the one person in the country who can
sign something into law, the president of the United States, and our Democratic
colleagues,” McConnell said Tuesday.
Roughly
a quarter of the government has been shut down since Dec. 22 over an entrenched
fight on funding for Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The
Senate passed a stopgap bill late last year by a voice vote, but it was
rejected by the White House because it didn’t include extra border money
