By Kate Davidson and Kristina Peterson
Negotiations over a bipartisan deal for border-security funding
have stalled, aides familiar with the talks and other officials
said, raising the specter of another government shutdown at the end
of this week.
The snag in talks heightened prospects that President Trump will
declare a national emergency and seek to divert funds into
constructing a wall along the Mexican border.
Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump's interim chief of staff, on Sunday
said the possibility of the second lapse in government operations
couldn't be ruled out.
"Is a shutdown entirely off the table? The answer is 'no,' " Mr.
Mulvaney said on NBC. A presidential emergency declaration to build
the border wall is "absolutely on the table," he said.
Such a declaration, to which lawmakers from both parties have
expressed opposition, would likely face an immediate court
battle.
The government's funding expires at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.
Aides said they expected the talks to resume well before then.
Lawmakers often haggle up until the last minute in an effort to cut
the most advantageous deal possible.
The impasse, which occurred before participants had finalized
border-security funding levels, pointed to the likely difficulty of
talks over the coming five days.
Adding to this week's task, lawmakers also need to wrap up
details of a broader budget agreement to fund nine of 15 federal
agencies through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept.
30.
Those agencies, including the Justice, State, Treasury and
Interior departments, are currently being funded by a short-term
spending bill that lawmakers agreed to in January to end a 35-day
government shutdown.
If Congress doesn't reach agreement by the end of the day on
Friday, those agencies likely would shut down again, triggering a
new round of furloughs for hundreds of thousands of federal workers
and disrupting services across the government.
Mr. Trump, who had said publicly he would accept political
responsibility before the 35-day partial government shutdown began
in December, blamed Democrats for the prospect of another one. He
wrote in a Twitter post that last week was "a very bad week for
Democrats," pointing to strong economic data, his State of the
Union address and the controversy surrounding Democratic officials
in Virginia. "I actually believe they want a Shutdown. They want a
new subject!"
The talks this weekend snagged over the issue of how many
detention beds would be provided at the border for people detained
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Democrats have
been seeking to limit the number of beds in exchange for meeting
GOP demands to build more physical barriers along the border.
Republicans, however, wanted exceptions to the limits.
Democrats had proposed establishing a new limit on detention
beds used by ICE officials when apprehending people for violations
within the U.S., known as interior enforcement. Those beds would be
capped at 16,500, within the existing overall cap of 40,520 beds
funded in the fiscal year 2018 spending bill.
"A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration
to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real
security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing
to our country, " said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D., Calif.), who
leads the House Appropriations Homeland Security panel.
Republicans objected, wanting to exclude violent criminals from
that cap. Without an agreement on ICE beds, talks on funding levels
and physical barriers stalled. It wasn't clear when the discussions
would resume, a senior GOP aide said.
The stall in the talks also meant negotiators hadn't reached any
agreement on funding for the barrier along the Southern border. "We
hit a snag here that prevented us from even getting to that," the
senior GOP aide said.
On Sunday, Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who is involved
in the talks, said on Fox News, "Negotiations seldom go smooth, all
the way through. It's give and take. It's compromise."
He said he wasn't certain negotiators would reach a deal. "But
this group of people and the folks from the House, I think we're
going to end up with something that deals with detention beds, with
barriers, with technology, with the challenges we have in the
Southern border in a common-sense way."
Mr. Mulvaney said Mr. Trump remained committed to building the
wall "with or without Congress" as lawmakers negotiated a proposal
in the range of $1.3 billion to $2 billion that would include
funding for barriers and other measures.
One senior White House official on Saturday said the current
talks for wall funding were "nowhere close" to $2 billion, and
expressed pessimism about reaching a deal this week.
The amount under negotiation is well short of Mr. Trump's
demands of $5.7 billion, but could mark an increase from the $1.3
billion that was allocated for border security in fiscal 2018.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), said Democrats would be willing
to compromise over some funding for the wall, noting that many of
them have previously voted for border security. "I think the
problem now is that we've only got about seven months left on the
fiscal year, so I don't think the president can actually spend much
more than $2 billion," he said on CNN.
Mr. Mulvaney declined on Sunday to specify an amount of funding
that Mr. Trump would find sufficient to sign a bill into law. "The
president is going to build the wall," he said. "We'll take as much
money as you can give us and then we will find the money someplace
else, legally, to secure that Southern barrier. This is going to
get built with or without Congress."
Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), the chairwoman of the House GOP
conference, said she is hopeful the group negotiating over border
security would reach an agreement, but stopped short of saying
whether Republicans would agree to a potential compromise for a
lower amount than Mr. Trump had demanded for border-wall
funding.
"It's going to have to be sufficient funds through an agreement
hopefully that we can reach that will enable us to know that moving
forward we'll be able to have a wall, have a barrier, on those
parts of the border where it's really necessary," she said on
CNN.
--Natalie Andrews and Michael C. Bender contributed to this
article.
Write to Kate Davidson at kate.davidson@wsj.com and Kristina
Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2019 19:08 ET (00:08 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.