Blaming President Donald Trump for an imminent government shutdown for his stand on a border wall, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday said that American people cannot afford this.
Trump has made securing the country’s southern border with Mexico a focal point of his presidency, with plans to beef up border security and create a wall as key components.
“The Trump shutdown is something that can be avoided, that the American people do not need at this time of economic uncertainty, people losing jobs, the market in a mood and the rest. It is a luxury. The Trump shutdown is a luxury that the American people cannot afford,” Pelosi told reporters soon after her meeting with Trump at the White House.
Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer accompanies Pelosi, next Speaker of US House of Representatives, for the meeting with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
“As I have mentioned to the President, he has the White House, the Senate, he has the House of Representatives all in Republican control, and he has the power to keep government open. Instead, he has admitted in this meeting that he will take responsibility,” Pelosi said.
Schumer said Trump made it clear that he wants a shutdown.
“His position, if he sticks to his position for $5 billion wall, he will get no wall and he will get a shutdown. The bottom line is very, very simple. And that is we want border security, and we offered him border security, but Americans know that the wall, not paid for by Mexico anymore, is not the way to border security and the experts say that,” he said.
The Democrats, he said, offered the President two ways to avoid a shutdown. First, pass the six other appropriations bills that have been agreed to by the Democrats and the Republicans, and do a one-year extension of the Homeland Security bill by what’s called a CR, which funds it the same way as last year, or do a one-year CR for all seven remaining appropriations bills.
“Both of those ways, we gave the President two ways, each of which would get a majority of the votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate and would avoid a shutdown, Schumer said.
We hope that he will take it because a shutdown hurts too many innocent people and this Trump shutdown, this temper tantrum that he seems to throw, will not get him his wall, and it is going to hurt a lot of people, because he is going to cause a shutdown. He admitted that he wanted a shutdown. It is hard to believe that he would want that, Schumer said.
Unfortunately, should the President choose to shut down the government, that we have a Trump Shutdown as a Christmas present, a holiday present to the American people, Pelosi said.
The new Congress, which would have a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, she said will be something different from the current Congress.
It’ll be a Congress of transparency. So that the American people can see not passing a tax bill with $7 trillion impact on the economy in the dark of night, speed of light, so that nobody can see what it is without hearings or any expert opinions on it, and is so it would be about transparency, she said.
It will be about reaching out, and extending the hand of friendship to work in a bipartisan way to find common ground where they can, and stand their ground where they can’t, Pelosi added.
