GOP makes government funding offer excluding money for wall
Capitol Hill has been working to avoid a government shutdown Friday.
— -- Congressional Republicans have offered Democrats a government funding deal that does not include new funds for the construction of a border wall, according to congressional aides familiar with the offer.
The move from GOP leaders comes as Capitol Hill scrambles to pass a government funding measure by midnight Friday to avert a shutdown on President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office.
The latest proposal doesn’t include funding for construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, but would allocate money to other border security initiatives, such as surveillance technology. News of the offer was first reported by The Washington Post.
"I think sometimes we get hung up on the semantics rather than really looking at what a really good system should include," said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., pointing to border security elements that have bipartisan support like technology and personnel.
“We're not opposed to border security. We are opposed to a wall,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the president sounded defiant on wall funding, accusing the media of misconstruing his position after he told a group of conservative journalists Monday night that he would be open to revisit wall funding in September in the next fiscal year.
In his daily press briefing today, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News' Jonathan Karl that the administration is determined to begin planning for wall construction this fiscal year.
“The wall is going to get built, folks,” Trump later told the travel pool in the Oval Office Tuesday when asked about government funding.
But even as both sides move closer to an agreement on border funding, Republicans and Democrats remain divided over a key Obamacare subsidy payment to insurers.
After Trump threatened to withhold the payments to insurers -- subsidies that help reduce insurance costs for low-income Americans -- in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Democrats demanded to include funding for the payments in a broader government funding measure.
According to a senior Democratic aide, the new offer from Republicans doesn’t resolve questions about the subsidies, which are known as cost-sharing reduction payments.
A senior White House official told ABC News the White House will not agree to include money for Obamacare subsidies in the fiscal year 2017 spending bill, saying, “Why don’t you ask the Democrats if they are willing to shut down the government over that?”
The official called including the subsidies a “nonstarter.”
So far, Democrats have indicated that they're willing to go to the mat for the payments to protect the Obamacare system. And Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass a funding bill through the Senate.
It is likely that before tackling a massive funding bill, Congress will pass a short-term extension to keep the government open at current funding levels for at least a week while negotiations continue.