Trump claims illegal immigration is costing the U.S. $200 billion a year

President Donald Trump is asking Congress to give him $5 billion for his wall, but he would consider legislation that stretches the money out over a decade, the White House says.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders indicated on Tuesday that Trump would be willing to accept a bill that provides $1.6 billion for his border wall this year and a total of $2.5 billion for border security annually over a ten-year period, in order to avoid a government shutdown.

‘That’s something that we would be able to support, as long as we could couple that with other funding resources,’ Sanders said on Fox News.

The announcement that Trump was willing to compromise came as news to Capitol Hill, where a Senate Democratic leadership aide had said just prior to Sanders’ announcement that the White House had not been in touch since an explosive fight with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer last week in the Oval Office. 

An offer of $1.6 billion for fencing but not a concrete wall currently sits on the table. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has proposed $1.6 billion for border security that Trump could use on fencing and a $1 billion so-called ‘slush fund’ that the president could put toward what the aide described as a ‘radical immigration agenda’ including a border wall.  

But Schumer rejected the offer from the Senate GOP leader, saying his caucus ‘would not accept a billion dollar slush fund’ for the president.

President Donald Trump is asking Congress to give him $5 billion for his wall, but he would be willing to look at legislation that stretches the money out over a decade, the White House says

Sanders claimed on Fox that the White House has been in ‘constant contact’ with lawmakers on Capitol Hill as the government edged closer to a government shutdown, although she declined to specify exactly whom the administration was lobbying.

‘We don’t want to shut down the government, we want to shut down the border,’ she announced.

The Trump spokeswoman accused Democrats of playing games and said that the president has been clear about his demands.

‘I think that they know very clearly what he wants to see, ‘ she said. ‘Let’s get the government funded and let everybody have a very good Christmas and go home.’

Pressed to say what Trump would be willing to agree to, besides the $5 billion that’s a non-starter on Capitol Hill, she said: ‘We would take, we have other ways that we can get to that $5 billion, that we will work with Congress if they will make sure that we get a bill passed.’

She seemed to be referring to a bill that died in the Senate last year after Trump raged against it, because it didn’t overhaul the federal immigration system. 

The White House clarified after the fact that she wasn’t saying Trump would sign that bill if it passed, but would consider a deal that provides $25 billion over 10 years for border security.

Trump claimed Tuesday as he continued to press for votes for his border wall that illegal immigration is costing the U.S. $200 billion a year.

He has previously claimed that it costs as much as $250 billion a year, and his border wall would pay for itself in one to two months, if only Democrats would fund it. 

That claim has been evaluated by factcheckers who say the estimated costs, based on existing studies, is actually much lower. At most, a 2017 study found it to be around $135 billion, Politifact assessed.

But Trump again said, without providing evidence, on Tuesday: ‘Illegal immigration costs the United States more than 200 Billion Dollars a year. How was this allowed to happen?’ 

The White House must come to an agreement with Democrats on border security by Friday or parts of the government will shut down. Advisers to the president were confident that a deal would be made in time and stressed that a shutdown is not preferable. 

President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday as he continued to press for votes for his border wall that illegal immigration is costing the U.S. $200 billion a year

President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday as he continued to press for votes for his border wall that illegal immigration is costing the U.S. $200 billion a year

But as of Tuesday morning, they had nothing specific to offer, aside from Trump’s demand that any spending bill appropriate $5 billion to his border wall.

Sen. Mike Rounds, the author of a bill that had majority support last year to fund Trump’s border wall but fell below a 60-vote threshold, said that Democrats should be willing to back legislation again that gives the president $2.5 billion annually for 10 years for his wall and other border security measures. 

Rounds’ bipartisan bill, co-authored by Sen. Angus King, provided a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrant children in exchange for the $25 billion for Trump’s wall and border security.

That bill failed in the Senate early this year after Trump lobbied against it. He called it a ‘giant amnesty’ for illegal immigrants. 

Sanders later suggested that the president would be willing to support a bill that includes a provision like that after Rounds appeared on Fox News. His interview was shortly before hers.

Rounds had warned the White House that Democrats are becoming more dug in by the day on a spending bill.

‘The sooner we get this thing done the better off we are,’ he’d said.  

The Republican senator pointed out that last year, 46 Democrats supported the bill that ultimately failed on a vote of 54 yeas to 45 nays.

‘And they think now that they’ve got the House, they’re going to be able to be in a better position to negotiate. I think its going to be very difficult to get them to the bargaining table at this stage in the game,’ he cautioned.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday night that Trump is the deal-maker in chief and she had confidence in his ability to avert a fiscal crisis

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday night that Trump is the deal-maker in chief and she had confidence in his ability to avert a fiscal crisis

President Donald Trump blasted Democrats opposing his border security policies Monday as company men and women who won't write him a giant check for his border wall out of loyalty to the Democratic Party

President Donald Trump blasted Democrats opposing his border security policies Monday as company men and women who won’t write him a giant check for his border wall out of loyalty to the Democratic Party

He said he’d heard $1.6 billion and $1.3 billion being thrown around as possibilities. 

‘So if the president is able to get anything over $1.6 billion, it’s better than what we had before,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure exactly where we go when we’re all done, but we need to move forward. A shutdown is not the place to go right now.’ 

Rounds advised that on Jan. 2, when Democrats take control of the House, it’s just going to ‘get more miserable for the president to get anything done at all.’ 

‘I’m optimistic that adults will come on every side and that we will get this thing done, and that we will not have a government shutdown,’ he said. ‘It simply sends the wrong message about responsible, responsibility in Washington, D.C. We need to get our job done, and the sooner we get it done the better.’  

His counsel and that of other senators who’d said over the past week that they did not want a shutdown did not appear to fall on deaf ears. The White House signaled half-an-hour later that he would be willing to compromise.  

The White House had expressed confidence on Monday that Trump would be able to negotiate a work-around to the fiscal crisis.

‘With the ultimate deal maker in the Oval Office,’ Kellyanne Conway had said, ‘I believe that there’s a much better chance of getting a deal than not.’

The counselor to the president told Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, ‘The president wants to keep the government open, he just doesn’t want the borders to remain open the way they are. He wants there to be full funding for the government but that funding must include adequate funding for border security.’

She said that Senate Democrats need to understand that Trump doesn’t believe that a wall on its own will resolve America’s border security problems. 

‘It includes a wall, but it includes all the enhancements and improvements and fencing that…customs and border patrol tell us they need to be able to be able to do their jobs and keep us all safe.’ 

Trump had blasted Democrats opposing his border security policies Monday as company men and women who won’t write him a giant check for his border wall out of loyalty to the Democratic Party. 

Trump needled the other side as the calendar moved one day closer to a fissure that would see parts of the government closed down and an expected 380,000 federal workers furloughed over the Christmas holiday.

He said in a tweet: ‘Anytime you hear a Democrat saying that you can have good Boarder Security without a Wall, write them off as just another politician following the party line. Time for us to save billions of dollars a year and have, at the same time, far greater safety and control!’

The president apparently meant to write ‘border security,’ and corrected the spelling error, as he sometimes does, sending out a revised version of his message hours later.

The president apparently meant to write 'border security,' although he did not immediately correct the spelling error, as he sometimes does by deleting and then sending out revised versions of his messages

The president apparently meant to write ‘border security,’ although he did not immediately correct the spelling error, as he sometimes does by deleting and then sending out revised versions of his messages

REDO: The president sent out a corrected version of the tweet hours later

REDO: The president sent out a corrected version of the tweet hours later

The president’s Monday morning push for his wall followed a warning by his top policy adviser that Trump could follow through on his threat to let the government close at the end of the day on Dec. 21 if Democrats continue to reject his demands for a $5 billion appropriation for border barriers of his own design.

Schumer meanwhile pledged on Sunday that Trump would not get the money under any circumstances and he should take one of two deals in front of him that would allow the federal government to continue operating through the rest of the fiscal year that provide money for fencing. 

A partial government shutdown will kick in at the end of the week unless Congress passes legislation that Trump agrees to sign or with enough votes to override a potential veto. 

The White House has not promised a veto or explicitly said that Trump is going to shut the government down.

Most areas of the federal government have already been funded through other appropriations bills. Roughly 25 percent of agencies are operating off of a Continuing Resolution that will technically expire early Saturday morning.

Roughly 420,000 federal workers, including most law enforcement, would be deemed essential in the course of a shutdown and required to remain on the job. They would receive back pay in the event of a partial government closure, CNN reports.

All other workers would be considered non-essential and sent home on an unpaid leave of absence. Congress typically gives them back pay for days missed, costing the government time and money for work that wasn’t actually done.

It can take weeks for the money to arrive, especially if the shutdown lasts until Democrats take control of the House the first few days in January, putting a financial squeeze on families over the Christmas holiday.  

The Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, State, Interior, Agriculture, Treasury, Commerce and Justice would be affected.

Despite a funding lapse for DOJ, a shutdown wouldn’t stop the special counsel probe, however, because of the way that Robert Mueller’s probe is funded. 

Congress is out of session until Wednesday and will have merely three working days to figure out how to get out of the hole when they come back to Washington. 

A plan to defer the conversation until next year had been making the rounds but it didn’t appear to be picking up any traction.

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday said 'if it comes to it' the administration would 'absolutely' shut down the government to fund a border. His hair was the talk of Twitter, though, as users pointed out that it had apparently been sprayed on

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday said ‘if it comes to it’ the administration would ‘absolutely’ shut down the government to fund a border. His hair was the talk of Twitter, though, as users pointed out that it had apparently been sprayed on

Schumer accused Trump of throwing a ‘temper tantrum’ on Sunday and reminded the president that he promised to own a shut down if one occurs.

‘President Trump should understand. There are not the votes for the wall. In the House or the Senate, he is not going to get the wall in any form. Even the House which is a majority Republican, they don’t have the votes for his $5 billion wall plan,’ the Democratic leader said.

The Democrat from New York claimed that House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is on his final days in office, is ‘afraid of what’s going to happen’ and so he ‘sent all the House home until Wednesday night, a day and a half, two days before the shutdown.’     

‘He shouldn’t use innocent workers as hostage for his temper tantrum to sort of throw a bone to his base,’ Schumer charged on ‘Meet the Press’ on NBC News. 

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday said ‘if it comes to it’ the administration would ‘absolutely’ shut down the government to fund a border wall as President Trump defended his immigration policies on Twitter.

We’re going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration,’ Miller said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’

Asked if that meant a shutdown when the government runs out of funding on Friday, he replied: ‘If it comes to it, absolutely.’ 

Schumer was also appearing on television at the time, saying on NBC that Trump doesn’t have the votes for the wall in either chamber.  He said that Republicans privately, as some have even said publicly, say they prefer a continuing resolution that mirrors the previous year’s language for the Department of Homeland Security and continues through September to a shutdown over Trump’s border wall. 

‘They just have to have the guts to tell President Trump he’s off on the deep end here. And all he’s going to get, with his temper tantrum, is a shutdown. He will not get a wall,’ Schumer said.

Miller said a border wall was necessary for U.S. national security. 

‘This is a very fundamental issue. At stake is the question of whether or not the United States remains a sovereign country. Whether or not we can establish and enforce rules for entrance into our country. The Democrat Party has a simple choice, they can either choose to fight for America’s working class or to promote illegal immigration. You can’t do both,’ he said.   

Democrats are willing to cough up $1.3 billion and want additional protections for immigrants like the Dreamers, illegals who were brought to the country by their parents as children.   

Aerial view of migrants who form part of the Central American migrant caravan, turning themselves over to a border patrol agent after crossing the US-Mexico border fence

Aerial view of migrants who form part of the Central American migrant caravan, turning themselves over to a border patrol agent after crossing the US-Mexico border fence

Trump suggested in a Thursday tweet he now sees the value of avoiding an expensive and potentially toxic government closure, even though Miller said Sunday that he has no problem presiding over a government shut down.

‘Let’s not do a shutdown, Democrats – do what’s right for the American people!’ Trump had tweeted.

This could be the president’s last chance to fully fund his wall. Democrats take control of the House of Representatives on Jan. 3 and they are not likely to give Trump the money he needs to make his wall a reality. 

Trump, in an extraordinary Oval Office shouting match Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi last week said he would shut down the government if he didn’t get his funding – and take responsibility for it.  

 ‘I will shut down the government. Absolutely,’ he said.

For twenty minutes, Pelosi and Schumer sparred with Trump on camera, emphasizing their long-stated position that he cannot have his border wall funding. 

Furious, the president said that he would shut down the government if they don’t give it to him.

‘You want to put that on [me], I’ll take it,’ he rebutted as Schumer told him that the last government closure was his fault, too. ‘You know what I’ll say: Yes, if we don’t get what we want, one way or the other — whether it’s through you, through a military, through anything you want to call — I will shut down the government. Absolutely.’ 

Trump told Chuck Schumer he would take responsibility for a government shut down

Trump told Chuck Schumer he would take responsibility for a government shut down

Trump repeatedly that he’d shut the government down and that he’d happily take the blame in comment that could could back to haunt his administration.

‘I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle,’ he asserted. ‘I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down.’   

 

 

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