White House threatens to VETO Pelosi’s bill ending government shutdown without $5.6 billion for Trump’s wall – saying Democrats want to overspend by $21.8 billion on things he never asked for
- Trump wants $5.69 billion for construction of his long-promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border
- Democrats took over the House of Representatives on Thursday, and are offering nothing
- White House budget office says Trump is likely to veto the spending bill if it comes to his desk without the border wall money attached
- Budget office says the spending bill has room for the wall funding since it includes $21.8 billion in ‘extra’ spending Trump never asked for
- That includes funding for the UN, the EPA, foreign aid programs and HUD rental assistance, far beyond what was in the White House’s budget request
The White House said Thursday that if House Democrats were to pass a spending proposal that would reopen the government without offering billions of dollars for Donald Trump’s border wall, he would likely issue his first presidential veto.
The House is expected to pass the legislation Thursday night.
Trump wants the same $5.69 billion package for his border barrier project that the House passed last month when Republicans were still in charge. Democrats took over the chamber Thursday afternoon following a power shift in November’s elections.
They are offering ‘nothing for the wall,’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi told NBC this week. But the Office of Management and Budget complained in a policy statement Thursday afternoon that their bill includes $21.8 billion of spending on projects Trump never asked for in his 2019 budget proposal.
President Donald Trump’s White House budget office said Thursday that if Congress sends him a funding bill that would reopen the federal government’s shuttered agencies without providing him with money to build his border wall, his aides will advise him to veto it
Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi returned to the House speakership on Thursday and immediately moved toward a vote on a spending package that the White House says is a nonstarter because it spends $21.8 billion the White House never asked for while denying Trump the $5.6 billion he wants
‘The Administration is committed to working with the Congress to reopen lapsed agencies, but cannot accept legislation that provides unnecessary funding for wasteful programs while ignoring the Nation’s urgent border security needs,’ OMB said in its statement.
The ‘unnecessary’ spending includes $12 billion more than Trump requested for international affairs programs. Democrats have earmarked about $2.9 billion of that for economic and development assistance – including money dstined for the West Bank and Gaza, Syria, and Pakistan.
‘Our foreign aid is either frozen or under review’ in those places, OMB noted.
The Democrats’ spending bill also includes an extra $700 million for the United Nations, including restored funding for the UN Population Fund. The State Department cut off that money in April 2017, claiming the agency was assisting with ‘a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.’
The president has long promised a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, stretching hundreds of miles beyond the existing barriers like this setion near San Diego, California
The bill adds $2 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency and $7.1 billion beyond the White House’s request for Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance programs.
‘These and other excessive spending items makes the lack of adequate border funding in the combined package all the more unacceptable,’ OMB said.
About 25 per cent of the federal government’s spending was frozen on December 21 at midnight, putting roughly 780,000 federal workers either on furlough or on unpaid work status.
If the partial shutdown ends before January 11, no employees are expected to miss any paychecks. Whenever the affected agencies return to normal, employees who were sent home will be paid as though they had been at work.
The Office of Management and Budget released a statement Thursday outlining the reasons Trump would issue his first veto if his wall project isn’t funded
Trump has shown no sign of backing down from his demand for border security funding. With Democrats running the House of Representatives, however, it’s unclear how he can prevail. the U.S. Constitution requires that all spending bills must originate in the House.
Democrats in the Senate are also refusing to budge. Rules there require a ‘supermajority’ of 60 votes, instead of simple majority of 51, to end a debate and proceed to a vote. Republicans control just 53 seats.
Each party is pointing a finger at the other for the shutdown. Trump told Senate Minority Keader Chuck Schumer last month in the Oval Office that he would ‘take the mantle’ of the shutdown, adding: ‘I won’t blame you for it.’
That has changed, with the president tweeting about a ‘Schumer shutdown.’
He was unusually solicitous toward Pelosi on Thursday, congratulating her for returning the the speakership after eight years of Republican control.
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‘It’s a very, very great achievement, and hopefully we’re going to work together and we’re going to get lots of things done, like infrastructure and so much more,’ he said during his first-ever visit to the White House press briefing room.
Trump infuriated reporters by taking no questions. But he shared the podium with leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union that supports border guards.
‘I can personally tell you, from the work that I have done on the southwest border, that physical barriers – that walls – actually work,’ said the group’s president, Brandon Judd.
OMB cited immigration statistics hours later to justify Trump’s hard-line position, saying an average of 2,000 people cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally every day.
In the past two fiscal years, the agency added, ‘Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested close to 211,000 aliens convicted of criminal offenses and an additional 55,000 aliens charged with criminal offenses.’
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