The
Hill reported Thursday that, according to Senate negotiators, a lack of clarity
from the President about his plans for a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico
border is holding up talks to avoid a government shutdown.
The
administration has demanded tougher immigration controls and more
border-security measures in return for relief for Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals program recipients in the 2018 spending bill.
But
Republicans and Democrats working on a possible immigration deal said Wednesday
they're still waiting to receive Trump's specific demands for tighter border
security to hash out a deal.
Republicans
are now saying that a deal to fund the government might have to move separately
from a bill that provides a DACA fix and tightens border security.
Democrats,
however, say they extracted a concession from GOP leaders and senior
administration officials Wednesday afternoon to keep the spending and
immigration talks linked as part of the same bargain.
The
biggest question is whether the administration will insist on building a
2,200-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as the President indicated in a
recent interview with The New York Times, or whether he’ll settle for increased
patrols and surveillance.
“That’s
something we’re waiting on the White House to give us clarity on,” said Sen.
James Lankford, R-Okla., one of the negotiators. “When you talk to [the
Department of Homeland Security] and the other individuals, they talk about
technology, they talk about personnel, they talk about physical barriers. “The
president has just said, ‘I call it wall.’ Everything is ‘wall.’ But I don’t
think he really means 30-foot high wall for 2,000 miles,” Lankford added.
Trump
indicated in an impromptu interview with The New York Times last week that he
would insist on a border wall in exchange for granting legal status to
immigrants covered under the DACA program. “I wouldn’t do a DACA plan without a
wall. Because we need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need
the wall,” Trump told Michael Schmidt of The Times.
The
president appears in his public pronouncements to be calling for a 2,200-mile
solid structure while senior administration officials talk about the wall as
more of a metaphor for tighter security.
“There
will be wall components, not a 2,200-mile wall,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,
one of the negotiators, said before the Christmas break.
Sen.
Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of the Democrats working on a prospective immigration
deal, said the reason Trump hasn’t wanted to put his proposal for a border wall
on paper is because it would appear unfeasible and draw opposition from fellow
Republicans.
“It has
been almost three months since we asked the administration to provide us with a
specific border security proposal. Still, I haven’t seen it,” Durbin said.
“What
do you think ‘the wall’ means? Nobody knows. When they’re forced to put it on
paper they have a problem. It’s too expensive and it is controversial and there
are parts of it that Republicans don’t like so they’re afraid to write it down.
But they’re holding us up.”
Now
some senior Republicans are floating the possibility that the 2018 spending
deal will move separately from immigration legislation.
Government
funding runs out on Jan. 19 and Congress has until March 5 to come up with a
solution to protect Dreamers from deportation.
Senate
Republican Conference Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday that he
doesn’t think the spending package will include the immigration legislation.
“I
think that can be handled separately,” he said. “On this one you’ve got health
care extenders, tax extenders, you have disaster, you have a lot of moving
parts,” referring to various provisions to extend expiring tax breaks,
subsidize insurance companies, authorize intelligence surveillance and provide
disaster relief funding that will be added to the fiscal year 2018 spending
bill.
Thune
said a prospective deal on Dreamers and border security probably won’t be done
in time to add to the spending bill. “I don’t think they’re anywhere close.
That’s not ripe yet,” he said of a possible immigration deal.
But
Democrats are pushing back hard on the notion that the omnibus spending package
will move without a deal on immigration.
A
Democratic leadership aide said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,
and Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., agreed in a Wednesday afternoon meeting that the
fate of Dreamers will be part of the broader talks on spending.
“The
four leaders and White House officials agreed to keep negotiating a bipartisan
budget agreement to lift the defense and non-defense caps, a DACA and border
agreement, a health care package, as well as a disaster aid bill,” the aide
said.
So,
confusion continues to deepens over the spending deal. Right now, there are a
lot of assurances that the Congress will keep the government open, but there is
a lot of uncertainty as well. This is a fight producers need to watch carefully
as it proceeds, Washington Insider believes.