U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Saturday that he was continuing to negotiate with Democrats to end the partial government shutdown, but added that “it could be a long stay.”
The sticking point, Trump said, remains border security. Trump has demanded $5 billion in federal funds to help build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
I am in the White House, working hard. News reports concerning the Shutdown and Syria are mostly FAKE. We are negotiating with the Democrats on desperately needed Border Security (Gangs, Drugs, Human Trafficking & more) but it could be a long stay. On Syria, we were originally…
—@realDonaldTrump
The U.S. House and Senate are scheduled to reconvene Saturday at noon and had pledged to talk through the weekend in search of a deal to end the partial shutdown ahead of the Christmas holiday.
The impasse came after Trump threw a wrench into the works earlier in the week by refusing to agree to a short-term funding deal cut by Democratic and Republican senators because it did not include the funds for his border wall.
The U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans have a majority until Democrats take over on Jan. 3, then passed a bill that included the $5 billion, but it ran aground in the Republican-controlled Senate and the shutdown began at midnight on Friday.
After it became clear the bill lacked the votes to pass, Senate leaders huddled with Vice-President Mike Pence and other White House officials to try to figure out a path forward.
They failed and lawmakers in both houses of Congress were sent home.
Trump’s ‘temper tantrum’
Trump tried to blame Democrats.
“We’re going to have a shutdown. There’s nothing we can do about that because we need the Democrats to give us their votes,” he said in a video posted to his Twitter account two hours before the midnight deadline.
Democrats repeatedly reminded Trump, and voters, that he said last week he would be “proud” to shut the government down in order to get funding for a border wall.
“President Trump has thrown a temper tantrum and now has us careening toward a ‘Trump shutdown’ over Christmas,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Friday.