WASHINGTON — Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday he “absolutely cannot” guarantee there won’t be another government shutdown when the current funding bill expires at the end of the week.
“Is a shutdown entirely off the table? The answer is no,” Mulvaney told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.”
If “hardcore left-wing Democrats prevail” and give President Trump little to no money for his long-proposed southern border wall, “How does he sign that?” Mulvaney asked, as the wall is a major campaign promise the president made to his base.
“He cannot in good faith sign that. It takes a presidential signature for a spending bill to become law,” Mulvaney said.
The acting White House chief of staff acknowledged to Todd that he didn’t know if lawmakers were close to a deal.
“I honestly don’t know because it depends on who you listen to, and in fact, I think what we’re seeing now in these negotiations, and again, the White House, at the request of all the parties on the Hill, have sort of stepped back. We’re still participating, we’re still listening, we’re still talking, but we’re not leading the negotiations, we’re sitting there watching what’s happening and what we hear is just as varied as what you played out,” Mulvaney explained.
He added that it “sort of depends on who you talk to.”
“I’ve heard that there may be a deal with as much as $2.1 or $2.5 billion for a border fence, then I hear there may be $0 or as little as $800 million for the border fence,” Mulvaney said. “There’s one Democrat who apparently wants to not only reduce the spending this year, but go back and take money away from previous years that hasn’t been spent yet.”
“So it’s all over the map, and I think it’s all over the map because of the Democrats,” Mulvaney added, affixing some blame to the 2020 Democratic primary race that’s just heating up.
Mulvaney said that the lawmakers working on the conference committee to sketch out a deal could debut a plan later Sunday.
Congress will need several days to pass legislation and get it to the president before the Feb. 15 deadline to avert another partial government shutdown.
“I’ve been told it’s today,” Mulvaney said. “I was at Camp David with a couple of the conference members on Friday night and they were told to be in town today to get ready to sign a conference report.”
Trump signed a three-week spending bill on Jan. 25 ending a 35-day government shutdown so federal employees could return to work while lawmakers negotiate border security.
