President Donald Trump begins to focus his energies Thursday on avoiding a calamitous government shutdown as he huddles with his budget director amid tense relations with Congress.
Trump and budget director Mick Mulvaney meet Thursday afternoon, just days after Trump issued his own threat to shut the government down if necessary to secure funding for a wall on the southern border.
His comments drew a rebuke Wednesday from House Speaker Paul Ryan.
‘So I don’t think anyone is interested in having a shutdown,” Ryan said at a tax forum. “I don’t think it’s in our interest to do so,’ he said.
President Donald Trump is back in D.C. after a trip out west, with budget deadlines a little more than a month away
Matters are further complicated by Trump’s running feud with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The White House said Wednesday that prescheduled meetings between then would occur, but didn’t give a time or date, following a series of attacks on McConnell and GOP senators by the president following the failure to pass an Obamacare repeal.
The government reaches its statutory debt limit on Sept. 29th, and runs out of money at the end of September.
‘We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are committed to advancing our shared agenda together, and anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly not part of the conversation,’ said McConnell in his own statement, which unlike the one from the White House did not mention a border wall as a priority.
Investment firm Goldman Sachs in guidance to investors handicaps the chance of a shutdown at 50-50, Axios reported.
President Donald Trump waves as he steps out from Air Force One in Reno, Nevada, U.S., August 23, 2017
House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks during his visit to Intel in Hillsboro, Ore., Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017. Ryan used his visit to the technology giant to talk about tax reform
President Donald Trump greets Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., left, as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., right, takes his seat during a meeting with House and Senate Leadership in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Tuesday, June 06, 2017
A top GOP source put the chances even higher – 75 per cent. “The peculiar part is that almost everyone I talk to on the Hill agrees that it is more likely than not,’ the source told the outlet.
Centrist Republicans continue to chafe at the president’s tactics. ‘It’s entirely counterproductive for the president to be picking fights with Republican senators who he will need for important agenda items that they both agree on,” Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) told the Washington Post.
“Does he think that Democratic senators will be more cooperative than [Sens.]John McCain and Jeff Flake and Susan Collins? It doesn’t seem to make any sense,’ he said.