The Daily - Chuck Schumer on the Wall, the Shutdown and the Era of Divided Government

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

On the 12th day of the government shutdown, the Democratic congressional leaders went to the White House and proposed that the president reopen the government while the two sides ironed out differences on funding for a border wall. A couple of hours after that meeting, we spoke with Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, about his newly emboldened approach and how he and Ms. Pelosi plan to stick together in a divided Washington. Guest: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate minority leader. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, on the 12th day of the government shutdown, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi went to the White House and proposed that the president end the shutdown by signing democratic legislation with no wall. A couple hours after they made that proposal, we spoke to Senator Schumer about his newly emboldened approach and how he and Pelosi plan to stick together as the era of divided

government begins. It's Thursday, January 3rd. We're looking for a minority in the Nurse Schumer's office. Okay, well first, just go to the desk real quick, but it's upstairs on the second floor, so take the elevator to the second floor. Okay. Yeah, okay. Elevator, go this way?

Yes, sir. So what are we doing on the second floor? You tell me, what are we doing on the second floor. So take the elevator to the second floor. OK. Yeah. OK. Elevator go this way? Yes, sir. So what are we doing on the second floor? You tell me. What are we doing on the second floor? We're checking in with somebody. Yes. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. That's good. That's good. Good. Good. Good.

Going up. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Okay, so where are we going? We're on the elevator inside the Capitol building, headed to second floor. Second floor. Hi. I'm looking for my new organiser, Schumer's office. We're from the New York Times. Okay. Senator.

Hi. How are you? You look a little different. Do you have different glasses? I do have different glasses. Yes. This is very generous of you to notice. In Brooklyn, we don't have fireplaces.

So this is the greatest thing. And I have learned how to make a fire. That's fantastic. Now, Paul Ryan, when he left, he gave me these. These are cedar fire starters. They are really good and they smell good. And we have these nice little matches.

There's no metaphor here, right? You're just starting a fire. What I usually do with Donald Trump as president is try to put out fires. So thanks for coming. And I'm sorry it got a little delayed, as you can tell. I was sort of busy. It was a busy day. So obviously, I want to hear about this meeting that you had today. What was this meeting in theory? In theory, what it was supposed to be is a briefing on the border and why there needed to be more border security. They've had the weight of this shutdown on their back ever since the first meeting when Nancy and I were able to elicit from Donald Trump that he was proud to own a shutdown.

Right. And since then, they've sort of been squirming. They can't figure out what their position is. It changes several times a day sometimes. And so they had to show some motion, and this was the purpose of the meeting. But Pelosi and I are very close and have been since she came to Congress in 1986. We talk five, six, seven times a day. Really? Yeah, yeah.

And we figured that what we wanted to do was not let them divert attention from the main issue, which is the shutdown. And we had talked about a strategy, which was to do six bills that would reopen the government in every agency but Homeland Security. There are eight that are not open.

So we put these six bills together in one proposal in Senate for it. And then on Homeland Security, where we have trouble agreeing, we said, let's just do that for 30 days. Put these six bills on the floor and challenge or ask the president to support these six bills. So the context here, just so I'm clear,

is that Nancy Pelosi and the incoming class of freshman Democrats take power in the House tomorrow, I guess today by the time people hear this. So the plan that the two of you are putting forward is, here's a solution, here's something that's going to reopen the government. We're providing this to you. What will you do in response? Correct. You'll get it. And I said to the president, this will be good for the country, but it will be good for you and the Republican Party because, you know, the shutdown is not popular. And you justifiably, in my opinion, at least, are getting blamed for it, which is true. He should be popular. And you justifiably, in my opinion, at least, are getting blamed for it, which is true. He should be blamed. And what does he say in response? He didn't have a

good answer. He goes back to Homeland Security and there are thousands of criminals crossing the border and the border's porous, never once addressing what about these other six bills, which affect important things, food stamps, IRS, FBI, things like that. I just heard tonight that in a U.S. attorney's office, a young person, 28, 29 years old, but doing cybersecurity, it's not working right now. Well, that's important stuff. Because of the shutdown. Because of the shutdown. But you don't really expect that the president is going to go for what you propose. So what's the actual plan here? Because you called it a plan. What are you and Nancy thinking the end game is? We don't know if you'll go for it initially, but if it passes

the House, it changes the dynamic. Because now, you know, the Democrats, particularly the House Democrats, are trying to open up the government. It puts a lot of pressure not only on Trump, but on Leader McConnell. And remember, it's not like last session where we had all these vulnerable Democrats who were up for reelection. Now they have a whole bunch of vulnerable Republicans up for reelection. And hopefully people, lots of people will put heat on them and saying, come on, just open up the government. So, you know, even whatever you think of the wall, you should open up the government. So your plan sounds profoundly political in the sense that you want to put people in the position of having to vote

for or against a bill that would fund the government and leave them with the political legacy of having said yes or no to that. Is that the idea? Well, yeah, but it's not political. It's substantive. I mean, we want to, the government being shut down is a very bad thing.

So if you can provide a mechanism by which people have an opportunity to vote to open it back up again because their constituents are being hurt by it and then, of course, don't like it, that's a very good thing. That's how government should work. But putting forward a plan that Republicans are unlikely to go for is probably not the quickest path to reopening the federal government. Well, but when you're dealing with Donald Trump, who changes his position from minute to minute, I've said negotiating with Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O. But the last time we spoke, Senator Schumer, it was one year ago, I believe, we were also

facing a government shutdown. And it was again over the border wall. But back then, you were willing, as I recall, to talk about funding the wall in exchange for taking care of the Dreamers. Correct me if I'm wrong on any of that. So what has changed? If that would reopen the government, why not? What changed? Okay, great question. We were willing to do that. Why not put it on the table now? We would be willing, a good question. We were willing to do that because we cared so much about the dreamers. And the original proposal that Trump initially agreed to was we'll do the full dreamers for a full wall, right?

1.8 million dreamers all become citizens, not just some half-baked semi-solution. We agreed. The same thing that happened this time on the shutdown happened then. The right wing beat the daylights out of the president. Rush Limbaugh, I think, or Coulter or Ingraham called him Amnesty Donald. And he backed off. So our view is that Donald Trump, even if in a room he says, oh, I'll do something for the dreamers, the minute the right wing beat him up, he would back off.

You know, fooled once, shame on you. Fooled twice, shame on us. So you don't trust the president anymore. Is that what you're saying? I think he is so afraid of this hard right base. Look who's giving him advice on this now, this fellow Meadows, who's head of the Freedom Caucus. And that's only 40 of the most right wing. Yeah, Congressman Meadows from North Carolina. He's one of 40 of the most right wing congressmen. They shouldn't be governing America.

But Trump is letting them do it because he's afraid to lose his base. He has said, I think publicly, and I know he said it privately, if I lose my base, I have nothing. But if the president is afraid of the hard right, and there's evidence of that, isn't the likelihood that he accepts a Democratic proposal that does not include the wall completely out of the question? No. And therefore, aren't we stuck in the cycle of stalemates with no logical end of the shutdown. Our hope with this is, as I said, that Republicans in the Senate will realize that it's hurting them, hurting them, hurting them. And they will say, we want this. They will go to McConnell and McConnell will say, look, we've got to make some kind of agreement. And we can make an agreement on all kinds of border

security things, but we think a big concrete wall makes no sense. Do you think that's actually possible that McConnell would do that? It's just hard to imagine him embracing the symbolism of the first bill out of a democratically controlled house. OK, so the solution we gave them is not that they have to reject the wall. Solution we said is open up the rest of the government and let's spend 30 days trying to figure out a solution here. So the Homeland Security Bill, we do what's called a CR, reenact last year's bill, for 30 days. And during that time, and that's what we said to him at the White House today, I said, we're not going to agree on what should be border security today.

But if you went for both these bills, the government would open, but we'd have 30 days to figure out what to do because the Homeland Security bill would only be 30 days. We wanted to separate the shutdown of the government from the debate over Homeland Security and the wall. So what you're saying is the wall could actually still be on the table with this plan? For Trump, not for us. You know, he's got the military will build the wall, he said at one point. He said he'll get the money from NAFTA to build the wall. At some point, if he realizes he's not getting the wall, there will be ways to figure something out. These are all not going to happen. The military is not allowed to build the wall.

NAFTA doesn't give him the money for the wall. But he would say it as a face-saving way out to come to this agreement. A week later, he could forget all about it or change his mind. But I have a hard time imagining the president's going to forget about the wall. And he hasn't forgotten about it for two years. And I have a question about this. He said one other thing. The two I mentioned, the military, he said, or we'll make it an issue in 2020 and win the election on it.

He will find a face-saving way out, I suppose. And we want to give him the 30 days to figure out what kind of way out he can find. From him, it's totally political. But is it just a political symbol if it's what got him elected? Or is it the desire of the American people to actually have this? And if he sees this as a promise he made to voters who elected him, why not just give it to him? Is there any case, Senator,

that this is the will of the people or some meaningful majority of the people and the president is just trying to fulfill a campaign promise? Yeah, well, I dispute your premise. So why not? Yeah, right now the polling shows while a majority of his base likes

it, that's only about a third of the electorate. The vast majority of Americans are against the wall. And what he campaigned on was not the wall per se. It was the wall being paid for by Mexico. And a lot of people said, well, Mexico's paying for it. What the heck? And there's another question here. Do you let a temper tantrum, as I called it, where he bangs the table and says, I'm not going to fund things, that's not the way to govern. Then he'll do it on something else and something else and something else through the next few years. So you said that you don't want to reward what you call the temper tantrum by the president. So do you see it as a principled position not to give the president his wall because of the way he's using it as a kind of bludgeon in negotiations?

No. My principled position was the wall is very bad. But there's also the added factor that if you said, why not give in to him? Aside from it being bad, I think it would encourage him to do it again and again and again. I've been wondering, though, if when you're facing a government shutdown, the most principled thing to do is to find a way to reach any resolution. But maybe you're thinking about it a little bit differently. No, no, no. I think if we could reach a resolution, it would be great. But the resolution shouldn't be a 700-mile, big, shiny, beautiful, as he says, concrete wall. So how do you really think that this ends? Do you imagine that it ends with Nancy Pelosi and the New House Democrats passing a plan

and McConnell and the Senate supporting it? I'm not sure they'll do it tomorrow, but as pressure mounts on them, as it has week to week, I believe that they will then say, let's come to a compromise that we can both agree to. But it won't contain the wall. So when is it that you think this will happen? Well, you know, maybe next week, maybe a little longer.

But I think the president's advisors, aside from the hard right ones, I think that our Republican leadership and our Republican members in the Senate and the House are feeling some real heat. I've been wondering why this shutdown feels different than previous shutdowns. Why there seems to be a little less intensity and urgency around it. Maybe you would dispute that, but I think it feels different. And why is that? Three quarters of the government is still open. I think a lot of it occurred between the Christmas and New Year's break. So A, there were a lot of federal days off off and B, people weren't that focused on it.

I think the focus is going to increase. And number three, because this one is clearly caused by Trump. He admitted it in front of the cameras by everybody. And so it has a sort of different feel to it. And people say sooner or later, he'll have to back off. And so Democrats are less concerned

about perhaps the optics, the idea of being blamed. I mean, he'll have to back off. And so Democrats are less concerned about perhaps the optics, the idea of being blamed. I mean, he went out and said that. We want to keep, we believe in government. We want to keep the government open. I didn't hear you say no to that. I mean, the reality that the president having taken responsibility for the shutdown would perhaps not create a ton of incentive for Democrats

to therefore end the shutdown. Well, except look what we offered them today. We'd end the three quarters of the government's open now. Under our proposal, all but 5% of the government would be open tomorrow. So no, that's not true. Is it also that divided government is upon us? And so Democrats are better positioned to negotiate and to play hardball and to be more aggressive. No question about it. I've said to the president that elections have consequences

and he is going to have to realize he has two choices. He can work with us or he can just do what he's doing, which I think is a path to oblivion for him. And if you believe, as I do, that he cares most about is his election, re-election, this is a path to oblivion. Now, the $64,000 question, will he realize that? Our hope is that he will. So this all sounds very much like you and Speaker Elect Pelosi are preparing to move into this new divided government as a united front. It's also true that you're about to be in very different positions as of tomorrow, right? She becomes a majority leader, you remain a minority leader, and with her incoming class comes a much more liberal constituency, I'd argue, than you have.

And it may be very— You mean than the Senate? Than the Senate. And it's likely to be intent on sending bills to your chamber, to the Senate, that many, perhaps most Democrats in the Senate may not be as comfortable supporting, and that probably have very little chance of passing with McConnell as leader. Isn't it inevitable in the coming weeks and months that the two of you are going to have to break from this united front in some important ways? Let me say two things to that. One, Nancy and I will work together. And once the bills come over

here, there'll be two choices. And it will be unified, she and I, whether we can get McConnell to compromise enough so that we can pass some of these bills, even if it doesn't have everything we like. And I'm not going to do that on my own. I'm only going to do that with Nancy's okay, because if we change it and send it back to the house, what good is it if the house Democrats won't pass it, right? Or we will put pressure on these more vulnerable Republican senators because the world has flipped a little bit in the Senate where there are far more vulnerable Republicans up in 2020 than Democrats. And we'll put pressure on them to help support these bills, you know, infrastructure, things like that. So I think that'll work. But the second thing,

and this is about the Senate, we've had enormous unity in our Senate. That's how we defeated healthcare. That's how we got these two budgets done in the past and even got three quarters of this one done. I have a leadership group that meets every Monday of 10 people, now 11. You know who's on it? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Joe Manchin, Mark Warner. It spans the breadth, the wide breadth of our caucus. Of the Democratic ideology, right? Yeah. And we work together. What I've tried to do as Democratic leaders, have everyone talk to each other, everyone understand everyone else's positions, And it's created tremendous unity. I don't expect that unity to fade.

It's going to be even stronger because it was so successful for us. Is the point you're trying to make that you're trying to create space inside the Democratic Party for all types of democratic belief, all types of policy, however liberal, moderate? But one point I'd make clear, I believe that Donald Trump is hurting, screwing working families, poorer people, black, white, Hispanic, Asian. And I believe we have to take very strong medicine against the kinds of things he's doing. And you think that's what should unite the Democratic Party? And that, I think, can unite our Democratic Party in a very, very strong way. But are you afraid of what Democrats might do in the House now that they have this power? Are you worried they might overstep that things like investigating

the president, talk of impeachment could jeopardize the party heading into 2020? You know, let me tell you, I think the kind of energy that we are seeing in the country for some real change is very real and not just limited to, quote, the left wing. So I think it's going to work out quite well. But what about the freshman class of Democrats? We've met many of them. They are activist legislators. They are liberal to the bone. You think that Pelosi will be able to keep some of the more left wing elements of her chamber from going too far? I think the lesson that we took in the Senate in

the last two years, where we were a very diverse group, is when we're unified, we're far more effective at moving the country forward, at proffering our ideas, and in preventing Donald Trump from doing bad things. That happened almost organically. And I think it'll happen in the House. I'm interested just more generally in how you're thinking about governing in this era of divided Washington now. Should we expect Washington to become even less effective than it is now, with the House passing bills that have no shot of moving forward in the Senate or being signed by the president? Yeah, well, you know, even with the Republicans in control, aside from

judges and the tax bill, they didn't get very much done. But I am not pessimistic. I am optimistic that we can do a few things. One is really create a much clearer image in people's minds of what we believe and where we think America ought to go. I think there will be times when we will be able to get some things done. And I think that it may well be that we force some of the more mainstream Republicans to break more frequently with Donald Trump than they have in the last two years. Have they indicated to you that that's on the table?

A few have. We'll see more. Look, to be honest with you, I'm friendly with a bunch of the Republicans. The things they say privately about Donald Trump are so much worse than the things they say publicly. But with a Democratic House, with the country moving in our direction, with the election results as they are, maybe some more of that private feeling will bubble up to the public in terms of their actions. I hope so. You think this idea that Donald Trump controls Washington, kind of keeps a lid on things, might be less real and less dominant in the next two years? I don't know. Control is just

too strong a word. He doesn't really control. He dominates the news cycles. But, you know, the first meeting that Nancy and I had with him is sort of a metaphor for what's going to happen in the next two years. One of the Republican staffers said this is the first time he's heard things that he doesn't want to hear. He's going to hear a lot more of that in the next few years. I mean, that dynamic you're describing, do you think that's the reason why President Trump allowed the shutdown to move into the new year? Is it because he was counseled that it was better to be seen as having this fight with Democrats now that they are in control, especially with Nancy Pelosi as a symbol than with the old guard, with the Paul Ryans? And is that what this is going to now look like? No, I think the shutdown is Trump's need

to prove to his hard right base that he will stand for the number one thing he promised them. Well, Senator, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it. Great to see you. You have managed to create a truly warm fire, which I am sweating from. There you go. There you go. Look at that. I didn't flip it. You kept me so busy. Yes.

In a series of tweets on Wednesday night, President Trump seemed to hold out hope of an agreement, writing, quote, I remain ready and willing to work with Democrats to pass a bill that secures our borders, supports the agents and officers on the ground, and keeps America safe. Let's get it done. But even before he met with Schumer and Pelosi on Wednesday, the president rejected a compromise suggested by his own vice president, Mike Pence, that would provide about half the money he requested for the border wall, as well as a proposal from Republican Senators Lamar Alexander and Lindsey Graham that would revisit the idea of funding the wall in exchange for protection for the dreamers. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Beginning at noon, the incoming class of Democrats in the House will be sworn into office inside the Capitol as they take control of the chamber for the first time since 2010. Representative Nancy Pelosi is also expected to reclaim her former title as Speaker of the House,

becoming the first lawmaker in more than half a century to hold the office twice. On Tuesday night, Pelosi issued a statement to Democrats about the legislation she intends to bring forward today to reopen agencies now closed by the shutdown, but not to fund the border wall. We are giving the Republicans the opportunity to take yes for an answer, she said of the bills.

If they reject it now, they will be fully complicit in chaos and destruction of the president's third shutdown of his term. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.