Senator Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) on Wednesday denounced President Trump’s refusal to end the ongoing partial government shutdown by signing stop-gap spending legislation that lacks the $5.7 billion he has demanded for the construction of a border wall.
It’s important that we continue the debate on how we address border security & address the President’s top priorities, but it’s possible to provide for security & to address the humanitarian crisis on our border, while still doing our jobs to keep the government fully functional.
— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) January 9, 2019
Murkowski and three of her moderate Republican colleagues — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and Cory Gardner of Colorado — are calling for Trump to end the 19-day shutdown with a short-term spending bill that would fund the government through early February, at which point, the lawmakers argue, negotiations over border-security funding could resume.
Trump, who is meeting with Senate Republicans Wednesday afternoon to gauge support for his strategy, pushed back on the notion that his caucus is fracturing during a White House pool spray Wednesday afternoon.
“We have tremendous support in the Senate, we have tremendous support in the House.” Trump said. “They say, ‘Oh is it true that a congressman broke away?’ Let me tell you, every once in a while you’re going to have that. But you know who else has that? The Democrats. Because they have people breaking away too, because they know you need border security. But you don’t report that.”
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly considering the introduction of a number of discrete spending bills that would reopen individual government agencies in order to place greater pressure on the president to drop his funding demands.