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Trump: I'm 'ready, willing, and able' to work out shutdown solution on New Year's Eve if Democrats show
President Trump said he is "ready, willing, and able" to work out a spending deal tonight, New Year's Eve, if Democrats would come over to the White House.
The president stayed in Washington through the year-end holidays, choosing to forgo a Mar-a-Lago getaway, and has for days dared Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to get to work to end a partial government shutdown, which began Dec. 22, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Pelosi has taken some heat for reportedly spending part of the holiday at a Hawaii resort while a shutdown is taking place.
"I’m in Washington, I'm ready, willing, and able. I'm in the White House, I'm ready to go. They can come over right now, they could've come over anytime," Trump said in an interview set to air on Fox News late Monday evening, according to White House correspondent Kevin Corke. "I spent Christmas in the White House, I spent New Year’s Eve now in the White House. And you know, I'm here, I’m ready to go. It's very important. A lot of people are looking to get their paycheck, so I'm ready to go whenever they want."Trump has demanded $5 billion in funding for a wall or wall-like structures along the U.S.-Mexico border to be part of any spending package that reaches his desk. Democratic leaders, however, have said they are only willing to give $1.3 billion in funding for border security.
Democrats have a plan to reopen parts of the federal government affected by the shutdown. In a statement Monday evening, Schumer and Pelosi said their party has offered two bills: one that would reopen eight of the nine closed departments and their related agencies, with the aim of keeping them funded until September; the other would fund the Homeland Security Department through Feb. 8.
“If Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans refuse to support the first bill, then they are complicit with President Trump in continuing the Trump shutdown and in holding the health and safety of the American people and workers’ paychecks hostage over the wall," the pair said.
David Popp, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's communications director, told the Washington Examiner congressional Republicans would not consider a bill Trump would veto. "It’s simple: The Senate is not going to send something to the President that he won’t sign," Popp said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who met with Trump for lunch on Sunday, said afterward that Republican lawmakers could offer Democrats concessions extending protections to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients and those classified with Temporary Protected Status.
However, Trump says he won't budge on border security.
"No, we are not giving up. We have to have border security and the wall is a big part of border security. The biggest part," Trump told Fox News' Pete Hegseth
