GOP seeks to ram through Trump’s $5B wall demand

Faced with a conservative revolt and a change of heart from an unpredictable president, House GOP leaders on Thursday altered course and will try to ram through a government spending bill that includes $5.7 billion for President Trump’s wall and border security.

The new funding package would add two things to the stopgap measure that cleared the Senate by voice vote Wednesday night: $5 billion for President Trump’s wall on the Mexican border and another $700 million for border security; and $8.7 billion in emergency disaster aid for wildfires, hurricane damage and flooding.

{mosads}The House Rules Committee met Thursday afternoon to launch the altered proposal, quickly adopting the rule governing the bill. And House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and his vote-counting team began whipping members to gauge support for the new package.

While some Republicans voiced confidence, others remained skeptical it has the necessary support to pass. The $5 billion is a non-starter for Democrats and it is also opposed by a number of GOP lawmakers.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) told The Hill he is opposed to the new package even though it would contain hurricane aid for the Sunshine State. And dozens of House absences on Thursday were only complicating the GOP whip effort.

In a vote earlier Thursday, there were 42 lawmakers — 23 Republicans and 19 Democrats — who failed to show up for the roll call due to various reasons. Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), for example, is building out her new governor’s office, while retiring Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) is getting married this weekend.

With roughly 390 voting members, it will require roughly 195 GOP votes to pass the new funding package.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the far-right Freedom Caucus, predicted the bill would pass through the House — an outcome that is very much in doubt. He framed the effort as a necessary response to the clamor Republicans are hearing from their constituents at home.

“What I’ve hard very loudly and very clearly from my constituents is they don’t want us to just give up on this particular issue,” Meadows said. “They want us to fight on their behalf.”

Yet Republicans are hardly on the same page when it comes to the party’s approach to the year-end spending strategy.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) on Thursday suggested that GOP leaders pass the six outstanding spending bills that have been finalized, while moving the contentious Homeland Security bill — which contains the wall funding — on a temporary basis with a continuing resolution. That was the strategy offered by Democratic leaders and rejected by Trump.

“And that’s what we ought to do,” he said.

Senators are being advised that they should plan for a noon vote on Friday if the House can get a bill to the upper chamber, according to a Senate aide.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after returning from a White House ceremony sidestepped questions about the fight. Asked if he was still confident there wouldn’t be a shutdown, he said: “The action is over on the House side.” 

“We can jam them back,” Simpson said.

If the bill fails, it’s not clear what will happen.

Parts of the government will shut down on Saturday without a funding measure, an outcome GOP leaders in both chambers want to avoid.

But it’s not clear if Trump will sign a measure that doesn’t include his $5 billion demand.

Trump dug in further Thursday afternoon, stating at a signing for the farm bill that he would not budge if border security money is not included in the bill.

“I’ve made my position very clear: Any measure that funds the government must include border security,” the president said.

Trump said his push for a border wall “is not merely my campaign promise,” but is also “the promise every lawmaker made.”

{mossecondads}But the president also said he would call the structures “steel slats” in order “to give them a little bit of an out.”

“We don’t use the word ‘wall,’ necessarily, but it has to be something special to do the job,” he said.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Thursday he’d received a message that Trump would not sign a bill that did not include $5 billion for the wall. It wasn’t clear who the message came from though Limbaugh suggested it was from Trump’s circle.

“You tell Rush that if there’s no money in this, it’s getting vetoed. If there’s no money — if there’s no money for a wall — I’m vetoing this, plain and simple,” Limbaugh said in relaying the message.

“This was the message that I just got, and I trust it and I believe it to be the case,” he said.

Some rank-and-file Republicans said their objective Thursday was simply to have a vote on Trump’s wall — regardless of outcome.

“I think what members want is the ability to vote. We want to vote for our border security,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.). “That was what members were expressing to leadership in conference this morning, is that if it fails, it fails, but let us vote for what the people asked us to vote on.”

In the event that a vote on the $5 billion wall funding fails, he added, he believes much of the conference would be more amenable to a clean continuing resolution, and perhaps Trump would be as well.

Outgoing Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who attended the meeting with Trump, said the president’s reaction was key. “Ah, that’s the test,” he said when asked if Trump would sign a clean continuing resolution in the event a wall vote failed.

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), an appropriator, said the intent was to pass the wall funding, not to simply take a vote and let it fail.

“I don’t know anybody that just wants to vote on something that’ll fail,” he said. “I think there’s serious intent behind what everybody is expressing about border security.”

Democrats, meanwhile, marveled at the chaos.

“I don’t know who’s running this,” said Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the likely incoming chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee.

“If this is a conclusion, it’s very sad, it’s not productive, we were elected to get our work done and it’s really very sad that we can’t move forward with positive legislation,” she said.

Juliegrace Brufke and Jordain Carney contributed. 

Clarification: An earlier version of this story combined the total funding for the wall and border security in the GOP bill into one sum.