Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the plan from House Democrats to fund the government and end the shutdown isn’t going anywhere.
The Senate will not, he said yesterday, approve such a bill if it does not include money for a border wall.
Upshot: The bill that leftist House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her party propose will go nowhere. So don’t bother sending it to the other side of the Capitol.
House Plan
Democrats have assembled two bills to fund the government, neither of which contain a dime to stop the illegal-alien invasion that is not only destroying American sovereignty but also, as a practical matter, killing American citizens.
“The first includes six bipartisan spending measures that would fully fund agencies like the Interior Department and the Internal Revenue Service through the end of the fiscal year in September,” the New York Times reported. “The second would extend homeland security funding at current levels through Feb. 8, including $1.3 billion for fencing but no funding for Mr. Trump’s border wall — a provision that renders it dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate.”
Pelosi and hard-left Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) explained what they think is the political math: “If Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans refuse to support the first bill, then they are complicit with President Trump in continuing the Trump shutdown and in holding the health and safety of the American people and workers’ paychecks hostage over the wall. It would be the height of irresponsibility and political cynicism for Senate Republicans to now reject the same legislation they have already supported.”
In other words, the shutdown is Trump’s fault.
McConnell Says No
Of course, Democrats are rejecting border security that “they have already supported” as well, as McConnell noted two weeks ago when the shutdown began.
And he said that shutdown will continue without border security money.
“Democrats will have to get serious about border security so that a government funding agreement may be reached that can pass the House, earn 60 votes here in the Senate, and receive a presidential signature,” he said. “ All three of these things are needed. One partisan vote in the House tomorrow won’t solve anything.”
McConnell said the bill the House passes today will “not be a serious contribution to these negotiations. It isn’t comprehensive. It ignores the needs of border security. It’s exactly the kind of proposal you’d expect if the incoming House Democrats were choosing to stage a political sideshow rather than do the hard work of helping to govern the country. A total non-starter.”
McConnell said the Democrats should be “ready to roll up their sleeves, work together, and make laws” and not “waste time on partisan show votes that will do nothing to move the country forward.”
“But let me make this perfectly clear,” he concluded. “The Senate will not waste its time considering a Democrat bill which cannot pass this chamber and which the president will not sign.”
Shutdown Could Have Been Avoided
That’s the kind of tough talk immigration patriots want to hear, and if McConnell stands as firm on border security as he did on the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump has a chance to prevail against the Pelosi-Schumer open-borders Democrats.
Yet Neither Trump nor McConnell would be in the position they’re in now if McConnell had, as Trump wanted, used the “nuclear option” to pass a bill to fund the government.
That parliamentary maneuver permits the majority to shut down debate and pass a bill with a simple majority. Sixty votes are normally needed to close debate before the Senate votes on the actual bill.
Thus did the GOP bill to fund the government and provide border security fail. The House had passed such a bill to fund the government and gave Trump $5.6 billion for a wall, but McConnell and the GOP-controlled Senate collapsed and let Schumer and the Democrats have their way.
That shut down the government.
As well, one must ask what McConnell means by “border security.” Trump means a border wall, not merely drones and “high-tech” gadgetry to surveil illegal aliens as they scale border fences and hurl rocks at border agents.
Photo: AP Images
