Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer met one-on-one with President Trump in the Oval Office today to try and hammer out a deal that would avert a government shutdown. Schumer commented briefly to reporters upon his return to Capitol Hill. “We made some progress but we still have a good number of disagreements. The discussion will continue,” Schumer said.
Schumer called it a long and detailed meeting with the president that covered many of the issues both sides are hoping to get worked out, but, he said, “a good number of disagreements” remain.
The House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded until February 16 last night. Democrats are standing in the way of that bill making it out of the Senate because they would like to see a solution to the DACA problem included in any spending bill. Republicans have expressed the desire to solve DACA, but are operating on a March 5, deadline and not a January 19 one, they’ve said.
“The president has given us until March. Last time I looked, this was January. My colleagues, where is the urgency here?” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last night on the Senate floor, when it became clear Senate Democrats would be holding the spending bill up.
For his part, President Trump has canceled a planned weekend getaway to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, to help avert a shutdown. He was scheduled to leave Friday afternoon but pushed back his departure time as the possibility of a shutdown became increasingly likely. In the afternoon, the White House announced that the trip had been cancelled altogether.