Funding for President Donald Trump's promised wall along the Mexico border may now be "off the table" in the negotiations to fund the government for the next five months, but several other thorny issues still stand in the way of a bipartisan agreement to avoid a government shutdown this weekend. The looming question is just how unyielding Democrats, emboldened by Trump's walk-back on the wall, are prepared to be on issues like Obamacare funding and other provisions they want to see included—or excluded—in the spending bill.
Related: Trump shutdown threat creates no-win situation for Republicans
"Taking the border wall off the table is important, but it's not the end of the conversations," Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, second in command among Senate Democrats, told reporters Tuesday at the Capitol. He added: "The Republicans are in control. The White House and the majority of the House and Senate, it's their decision about whether the government shuts down." In other words, the minority party has more demands, and its members are feeling pretty confident that if those demands aren't met, and negotiations fail, it will be the Republicans, not them, who take the blame.
Funding for a border wall had been the biggest stumbling block to an agreement, which Republican and Democratic leaders have been working to reach for weeks. Despite their majorities, Republicans need Democratic votes in the Senate and likely the House to pass the spending legislation. Bipartisan negotiators had quietly been making progress on a bill that would fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2017, after the current funding law expires on April 28. But then the president and some of his top lieutenants began to demand that any proposal include more than $1 billion to begin construction of the wall, a top Trump campaign promise in 2016. Democrats quickly declared that would be a deal-breaker. Few Republicans on Capitol Hill supported the idea either, and after several days of back-and-forth the president suddenly retreated on Monday night.
In remarks at a reception with representatives of conservative media organizations, Trump conceded that the wall funding wasn't worth risking a shutdown over, and he said he could wait to take up the issue in September, the next time Congress will have to pass a spending bill. A congressional aide confirmed Tuesday that Republicans had presented Democrats with a new legislative proposal that did not include any money for a border wall.
Republicans and Democrats are still debating several other controversial provisions, however. They include efforts by some lawmakers to attach unrelated policy provisions, known as "riders," to the legislation, which Democrats are fighting. They are also demanding that the legislation protect funding for subsidies for low-income Americans to purchase health insurance under Obamacare, something the president himself has threatened to halt. Democrats, however, sent mixed signals Tuesday about just how tough a fight they plan to put up on the latter. Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, said it would be "helpful" if the spending bill included "clarifying language" affirming support for the subsidies, but suggested it wasn't a make-or-break demand. That's a departure from other Democratic leaders, including Durbin and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said Tuesday they wanted language in the bill to protect the Obamacare funding.
Republicans, meanwhile, expressed confidence Congress would avoid a shutdown. "We won't have a lapse in funding," an aide to House Speaker Paul Ryan declared Tuesday evening, although she wouldn't rule out the need for a short-term, days-long stopgap bill to keep the government open until lawmakers can hammer out the language on the legislation that runs through September. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a similar prediction earlier in the day. "We're going to reach an agreement in the next few days on how to process the entire bill through September 30," he promised. The question is what Republicans have to give up to get there.
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