Trump warns of ‘shutdown’ if deal over wall not reached

Bloomberg

The committee of lawmakers crafting a plan for the southern US border is expected to start meeting this week, even as a defiant President Donald Trump made clear he won’t take no
for an answer in his effort to construct a border wall.
“Does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL?” Trump said in a tweet that ran through what he termed more success in two years than any other president. Trump’s acting chief of staff said earlier that Trump was prepared to shutter the government again or declare an emergency if needed to get the wall money.
The first formal meeting of the Homeland Security Appropriations House-Senate conference committee will be on Wednesday, according to a senior Democratic aide.
The committee was created after a deal was struck to end a record 35-day partial government shutdown.
While Trump doesn’t want to close the government or declare an emergency to secure the funding he wants for a border wall, he’s prepared to do it if he and congressional leaders can’t strike a deal, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said.
“He’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border,” Mulvaney said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” one of two appearances talk shows. “What he wants to do is fix this the way that things are supposed to get fixed with our government, which is through legislation.”
Mulvaney said on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump will insist on a “wall where we need it the most and where we need it the quickest” that isn’t “a 2,000 mile sea-to-shining-sea wall.” He
didn’t say whether the president would take less than the $5.7 billion he’s been demanding in order to ink a deal.

Deal Accepted
Trump agreed to reopen the government after the partial shutdown that began on December 22 when he and congressional Democrats deadlocked on the president’s demands. Trump accepted a deal to continue funding for the shuttered departments — without money for a wall — until February 15 to allow for bipartisan negotiations on a border-security plan.
Trump was criticised by immigration hard-liners for the recent move, and is likely to face more pushback if he comes up empty-handed again on wall funding.
Mulvaney travelled to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland to work on immigration and border issues, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
But a leadership aide said there haven’t been negotiations yet on border security, and Democratic leaders aren’t budging so far in opposing money for a wall.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that they’re confident an accord can be reached. While they continued to insist there will be no funding for a border “wall,” they pointed to bipartisan support for border security and the potential for funding other areas of immigration enforcement in a compromise.

‘Medieval’ Wall
Democrats are willing to invest in additional infrastructure at the border and other security measures but have concluded that spending billions of dollars on a “medieval” border wall would be a waste of taxpayer money, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said. “That’s a fifth-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” Jeffries said.