The Capitol was nearly empty Saturday morning as the House and Senate came back into session, and White House and congressional aides continued to negotiate a way to end the government shutdown over President Trump’s demand for billions of dollars for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
A few lawmakers and leadership aides were seen wandering around the House and Senate floor, as leaders quickly opened up both chambers without any signs of progress since discussions on Friday night.
“We’ve pushed the pause button until the president, from whom we’ll need a signature, and Senate Democrats, from whom we’ll need votes, reach an agreement,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in his remarks on the floor Saturday.
Roughly 25 percent of the federal government – and agencies including the State Department, IRS, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security – shut down at midnight after Trump said he wouldn’t sign a funding bill that didn’t include $5 billion in funds for the construction of a wall.
Trump’s position seemed to harden after conservative allies on Capitol Hill and right-wing media began criticizing him this week. The president then prompted the House to add billions to a bipartisan Senate bill on Thursday and send the measure back to the Senate, where it lacked the support needed to clear the 60-vote threshold.
On Saturday, Democrats reiterated that they wouldn’t accept funding for the border wall, suggesting little progress had been made in preliminary discussions between congressional leadership and White House officials.
“President Trump, if you want to open the government, you must abandon the wall,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said Saturday.
Trump tweeted that he was “working hard,” at the White House Saturday morning, canceling plans to travel to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida for the holidays and hinting that “it could be a long stay” in Washington.
He said planned to have lunch Saturday with Vice President Mike Pence and a group of conservative House and Senate Republicans supportive of his border wall fight.
“The president refuses to compromise,” Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, told ABC News. “When you don’t have the votes, you need to compromise.”
Should Trump and congressional leaders fail to reach an agreement, Hoyer said Democrats were ready to pass a funding bill through the House when they take control of the chamber in January.
Much of the Capitol was stuck between that transition Saturday because of the shutdown. Boxes and Christmas decorations were stacked outside of offices that were scheduled to be swapped between Republican and Democratic House leaders before the shutdown.
House Speaker Paul Ryan was seen entering his leadership office Saturday morning with an overnight bag. The retiring speaker, who spends his nights in Washington in his office, had been evicted from his congressional office in the Longworth House Office Building.
