Author: Emily Cochrane and Jennifer Medina / Source: New York Times
A Honduran migrant on Friday near Tijuana, Mexico, where a fortified barrier stands along the border with the United States. Daniel Ochoa De Olza/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — With a partial government shutdown stretching past Day 5, the impasse over funding a wall at the southwestern border has highlighted the debate over effective border security, with a breakthrough possibly hinging on a semantic argument: What is a wall?
Lawmakers will return to Capitol Hill on Thursday to resume negotiations over either a stopgap spending bill to reopen nine federal departments and several government agencies or broader measures to fund the government through September. But the White House and Democrats remain at odds over the $5 billion that President Trump is demanding for a wall, his signature campaign promise.
Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip, told House members on Wednesday that no votes were expected on Thursday. That signaled that the shutdown would almost certainly stretch through the weekend — and probably into the new year. More than likely, it will fall to House Democrats to pass legislation reopening the government when they take control on Jan. 3.
The president told reporters on Wednesday that he would do “whatever it takes” to ensure funding was provided for the wall he once bragged Mexico would pay for.
“We need a wall,” Mr. Trump said during a visit to American troops in Iraq. “We need safety for our country. Even from this standpoint.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader who is expected to be elected speaker next week, told USA Today: “He says, ‘We’re going to build a wall with cement, and Mexico’s going to pay for it’ while he’s already backed off of the cement. Now he’s down to, I think, a beaded curtain or something. I’m not sure where he is.”
Democrats say they have little reason to negotiate. The administration has spent only 6 percent of the $1.7 billion allocated during the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years for physical barriers on the border, they said. About $1.3 billion was designated in 2018 for different types of fencing in areas that would have covered about 96 miles, but rising costs have shaved off 12 miles.
With so little spent, Democrats argue, Congress has no business more than doubling this year’s allocation. But a Republican aide said that all but $70 million of the money allocated in 2018 had been committed to border security projects.
Mr. Trump and his conservative allies are trying to paint their opponents as unwilling to invest in border security, while Democrats are working to draw a distinction between the current showdown and past border fights, when Congress approved billions of dollars in funding for hundreds of miles of fencing, barriers, drones and other measures to impede illegal immigration.
A wall “would be spending an enormous amount of money that would not achieve the taxpayers’ goal,” said Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and one of eight senators who negotiated a bipartisan immigration overhaul that passed the Senate in 2013.
“There is not a one-size-fits-all solution — a wall, slats, whatever — and nobody who has ever looked at this question has said that that is the solution,” he added.
Central American migrants near the United States border in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, last month.
While a final decision has not been made, Ms. Pelosi will most likely seek a swift vote on the legislation the House spurned before funding lapsed: the Senate’s stopgap spending bill would provide funding through Feb. 8, according to a House Democratic aide familiar with the negotiations.
Because next month will herald a new Congress, the Senate will have to pass it again. And there is no guarantee that Mr. Trump will sign it.
“We are still open to discussion,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “I would say that the wall is the problem. Most people we talk to say the wall is a political answer to a problem that really requires a thoughtful, a more…
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