Shutdown Looms and Priorities Stack Up as Congress Races Toward Session’s End

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and congressional leaders are racing against a deadline next week to avert a partial government shutdown, pushing disputes over the president’s border wall and an array of legislation that touches on everything from Saudi Arabia to farm policy into the waning hours of Republican domination of Congress.

The deepest impasse — and the one with the greatest potential to prompt a year-end breakdown — is over Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. The president has pressed for its inclusion in the final spending package before his party loses its House majority in January, a condition Democratic leaders have refused to accept.

Trump is set to host Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leaders, at the White House on Tuesday for a meeting that will test the new dynamic between a president weakened by midterm election losses and empowered Democrats working to define their party for the era of divided government.

Trump has flirted openly with forcing a government shutdown in a bid to compel Democrats to embrace wall funding. But Democrats have rejected such demands, saying they are willing to consider a much lower sum for border security or pass a measure that would essentially postpone the dispute, extending current spending levels for the Department of Homeland Security for a year.

“If President Trump wants to throw a temper tantrum and shut down the government over Christmas over the wall, that’s his decision,” Schumer said last week. “But there are two sensible options on the table.”

Beyond the wall fight and the bare-minimum endeavor of keeping the government fully open, a perennial year-end appetite for legislating has taken hold on Capitol Hill. A Friday deadline to complete business flew by without the faintest public hint of progress, after the death of former President George H.W. Bush prompted a rare moment of bipartisanship that had lawmakers push back the deadline to Dec. 21.

That only prolonged what appears to be a season of magical thinking in Washington, where members of one of the least productive Congresses in recent memory seem convinced they can accomplish a variety of lofty goals that have eluded them in the previous two years. Among the hopes for the next two weeks are completion of a sweeping farm bill; a vote on a measure to punish Saudi Arabia for the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi; a bill to protect the special counsel, Robert Mueller; and a criminal justice bill with bipartisan support.

Lawmakers do expect to extend the federal flood insurance program, overhaul the way Congress deals with sexual harassment in its own offices and potentially even pass major tax and pension changes.

And as calendar days wane, hopes are rising that major legislation will find a home in the must-pass final spending package and sweep through to the president’s desk.

“The majority leader’s strategy is to pack everything in against the Christmas holidays as closely as he can so that there’s minimum fuss, and then try to put together a package that will get the votes to pass, and you just throw everything you can into it and put nothing that you can’t into it,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. “The last gasp of Republican monopoly control, I don’t think they want to be a Christmas shutdown. That just sends such an appalling message, so I think that gets solved.”

Aides are tossing around metaphors to describe the means by which other bills could find their way into the spending package. The last train leaving the station. Final ornaments on the Christmas tree. “A big slumgullion of legislation,” Whitehouse offered.

Some measures have better chances than others. As momentum appeared to be evaporating last week to pass the criminal justice bill, it received a lift Friday, when Trump pressured Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader who has resisted scheduling it for a vote, to “Go for it Mitch!” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a prominent Republican holdout, also endorsed the measure, bolstering proponents’ argument that the bill has substantial enough support to pass.

Senators are also poised this week to take action on a resolution to cut off U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, a rebuke to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia for the Khashoggi killing and to Trump for failing to hold him responsible for it. While there is substantial bipartisan support for the move in the Senate, it faces a roadblock in the House, and Trump would likely veto it. And it is not clear whether the measure or other proposals to punish Saudi Arabia — by imposing sanctions or a weapons ban, or condemning the crown prince directly — could be attached to the spending legislation.

“The fewer things we put on the approps bills, the better chance of passing,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters last week. “I’d rather deal with appropriations, for the most part, and keep legislation off anywhere I can.”

Five out of the 12 annual spending bills have been passed, leaving seven to complete by Dec. 21, though those are expected to be rolled into one package. Negotiations over the Homeland Security bill, the most contentious of the group, have essentially paused as both chambers wait to see the outcome of the Tuesday meeting between Trump, Pelosi and Schumer.

“It’s an important meeting,” Shelby said. “From my view of the negotiations, they’re holding this up right now, that is, what the president wants and what they want.”

Before the Tuesday meeting, lawmakers are left to express “cautious optimism” that every major piece of legislation will get done before the new deadline.

“We are very close,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who helped write legislation that would overhaul how Congress handles sexual harassment. “We’re working on it every day.” McConnell had said there was not enough time to complete the criminal justice bill, which would unwind some federal tough-on-crime policies. But time for additional spending negotiations has opened more possibilities.

“My goal is to put it on the end-of-year spending bill,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of the criminal justice measure.

“We just added another week,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. "Ta-da! Time for the Mueller bill to get a vote, time for criminal justice reform to pass.”

Asked if any of that was likely, Coons shrugged, ducked into an elevator in the Capitol and said: “It should! No idea if it will.”

If not, a partial shutdown could be in the offing. Or lawmakers could decide to trade legislative haggling for family holiday time and punt their disputes for another day, agreeing to temporary funding bills known as continuing resolutions — or CRs — to keep the government open into 2019.

“It may evaporate,” Whitehouse said, “down to nothing but CRs.”