The NPR Politics Podcast - Government Shuts Down Over Stalemate On Border Wall Funding

Episode Date: December 22, 2018

A partial shutdown of the federal government began just after midnight Saturday, after Congress and President Trump were unable to resolve an impasse over his demand for funding for his border wall. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi there, this is Matthew Ricks coming to you from the UPS Hub in Denver, Colorado. It's our heaviest day of the year and our drivers are just headed out on the roads to make those important Christmas deliveries. This podcast was recorded at 9 29 a.m. on Saturday, December 22nd. And things have probably changed by the time you hear this. Now here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. We are nine hours and 29 minutes into a partial federal government shutdown. We're going to talk through how we got here and what Congress and the White House are going to do about it. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe.

I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. Sue, this is your first time back from maternity leave and you shut the government down. I think. Welcome back. I am afraid I'm being haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past right now. It's kind of a rough way to reenter into back into the workforce. But it's also, unfortunately, a very familiar way to reenter back into the workforce. So here we go. Well, because this is the third government shutdown we've had in this year.

Yes. And the fourth since 2013. Remarkable. OK, so let's talk through how we got here. Last night, it became clear that the Congress and the White House were not going to come to an agreement. President Trump put out a video on Twitter. 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. Call it a Democrat shutdown. Call it whatever you want. But we need their help to get this approved. So Democrats, we have a wonderful list of things that we need to keep our country

safe. Okay, so I'm assuming Democrats are not calling it a Democrat shutdown. No, I don't think so. I think they're calling it what Trump called it last week, which is a Trump shutdown, because he did say last week that he would take the mantle of the shutdown. Of course, now he's walked away from that. But last week he said, if you do this, I won't put the blame on you. I will be proud to shut down the government. I will shut down the government. And I am proud. And I'll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don't want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it.

The president is the instigator in the shutdown. The Congress had an agreement with the White House for a stopgap funding bill that was going to run through February 8th. Vice President Mike Pence had gone up to Capitol Hill. He had assured senators the president was going to sign this. The Senate passed it with a big, broad, bipartisan margin and kicked it over to the House. And as he has done in the past, the president kind of moved the goalpost and decided he didn't want to sign that stopgap funding bill anymore because it didn't have additional money he was seeking for the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. And this blew everything up. So the House then passed a bill that did have that money in it, kicked it back over to the Senate. And that's where we are right now, where the Senate is in active negotiations with the House and the White House to come up with some kind of a deal that must require 60 votes in the Senate and that President Trump, most importantly, says he will sign when they send it to him.

Ayesha, why did the president reverse course there and decide not to sign the spending bill, the short term bill? President Trump was taking a lot of heat from a lot of people on who usually support him. So commentators on Fox News like Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh were saying that basically he gave up on this promise that is like an essential promise of his presidency, that he would have a wall. And they were pointing out rightly that this may be the last chance to get funding for the wall because you have Democrats taking over the House next year. And Senate Democrats, well, all Democrats are a hard no on the wall, whatever the wall is. What the White House is asking for is $5.7 billion in border security funding. The Department of

Homeland Security says that that chunk of money, it would be dedicated to about 215 miles of physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Most of that 215 miles already exists. You know, I think it's important to remind people that there are walls along the U.S.-Mexico border at critical points where people tend to cross illegally. Are they walls or are they fences? They're physical barriers. Let's just use physical of some variety. And so a lot of this is to repair what has already been built. And I think that's important to remind people that they do say about 100 miles of that 250 miles would be for new physical structures, whether that be a wall or fence or steel slats or whatever. In the past, many Democrats, as the president

likes to point out, have supported and voted for these things. But they were always in conjunction with other legislation. Everything that they had supported in the past always came with a path to citizenship for the undocumented here, for additional measures of immigration legislation. And this doesn't have any of that. But Sue, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but part of the issue is that even though in the past, maybe Democrats would have been okay with walls or physical barriers, the wall has now become so synonymous with President Trump.

And when President Trump was talking about a wall, he wasn't talking about a fence. He was talking about, during the campaign, he made clear that was going to be something different from what we've had before. are so opposed to this wall in this moment is they see it as symbolic of a lot of Trump's policies on immigration that they are deeply opposed to. Many view as racist or discriminatory towards immigrants at the border and elsewhere. And their base is just as opposed to this for those reasons as the conservative base sees it as about national security, as about protecting our borders, about protecting the integrity of those borders. I do think Democrats also are drawing a tougher line on this because the president, he wanted to make immigration a central issue in the closing weeks of the

midterm elections. And Democrats just won 40 seats in the House. And I think their viewpoint politically is the public doesn't want this wall. I emailed Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, this morning and asked her a whole bunch of questions like, is the president willing to accept less than $5 billion? Is that all for the wall itself? Is it for other things? What about $1.6 billion for border security, even if most of that isn't the wall or if it's just replacing current fence? And her only response was, we are continuing to negotiate to get border security funding. Now, the fact that she didn't come back and say,

we need $5 billion and it has to be for the wall, I take as a sign that they are negotiating for something less than what the president's position has been. I mean, this isn't really a serious policy argument. This is a political fight. I mean, even the $5 billion for the wall is such a drop in the bucket for what is would be required financially and physically infrastructure wise to actually secure the border. It is so small and so incremental. This is not the big final debate over this. It's just really about the politics of it and the moment. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, what a government shutdown actually means.

Years ago, Jennifer Lopez's career almost took a big shift. Then the actress Penelope Cruz stepped in. I was like, I was thinking about maybe I'll keep doing movies, but I don't know if I'm going to keep singing. She was like, you have to keep singing. I'm Sam Sanders. My chat with J-Lo on the secret to her continued success this week on It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back. Ayesha, you've been looking at what exactly the government shutdown means and who's affected and how. Yes. So basically, this is a partial shutdown. So not everything is shut down, but it's about 25 percent of the government is shut down. And so some of the departments that are closed, or technically are not funded right now, is the Department of Homeland Security,

USDA, that's the Department of Agriculture, the Justice Department, Transportation Department, and then you have certain agencies that are also affected by this so like the Food and Drug Administration the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA so these are some of the agencies that are going to be affected by this and I do think it's important because you have a lot of federal workers all over the country who are going to be dealing with this over the holidays. So you have about 420,000 federal employees. They're going to have to keep working, but they won't be getting paychecks. Like all of those TSA agents that are helping you get through airport security this weekend. Exactly.

So they will be working, but they won't be getting paid, so they might be a little grumpy. And then you do have another 380, thousand employees that will be furloughed. So they will be sent home and they also won't be getting paid. So this is really affecting people's paychecks. That's a lot of people. So two thoughts on that that might explain why the urgency is slightly less urgent. One is that almost always, always after the shutdown ends, Congress immediately passes legislation to give people back pay. And two, people all just got paid. So the next pay period isn't for another like week and a half, which means even though people are working without pay, they could still get paid if this all gets resolved by then. Yes. So they could. So hopefully they will not miss a check. Now, some of the contractors who work like some of the custodial contractors and stuff like that, they just won't be working and

they won't get paid at all. So they don't get that that back pay. But if this does go longer and people miss a check, that's a big deal. Right. So and then the thing is, you don't know. So how can you plan? It's Christmas. Like it's super stressful splurge because you don't know what you have to depend on. The lawmaker is getting it together. I think one thing to look at, too, is the people that are working that are still essential workers. Right. That is generally considered people specifically in law enforcement. And I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of those law enforcement officials support the president on this. The Border Patrol Union, which represents the agents along the

border, it's not a government agency, it is the union that represents them, is fully supportive of this. So I think while we hear people talk about government workers not getting paychecks at Christmas or being furloughed, the position the White House is taking on this is one that many of the agents who are involved in the direct fight over the border funding wall are siding with the administration on. So, Sue, we say that things might change by the time you hear this podcast. But is it right that members of Congress will get 24 hours notice before a vote? That is what House Republican leaders have advised members. They adjourned Friday night and said they're going to work through the weekend. They're to keep trying to get a deal. And if and when they have something to vote on, members would be given 24 hours notice.

The best guesstimate at this point is because there is no deal right now, it doesn't seem particularly likely that members are going to probably be back in town before Christmas and that if they are able to get a deal, most likely the day after Christmas is when they might be able to come back into town and vote on something if something comes together. And because of that timing, you know, Christmas is a federal holiday. Christmas Eve is a federal holiday. And so it's not really disrupting all that much at this particular time of the shutdown. So I think that there is a less of a sense of urgency that this needs to be fixed the impact of a shutdown and are living their own lives. And Christmas is a very family focused time and are maybe hyper tuned into what's happening right now. So they have a little bit of wiggle room to maybe try and figure something out. And just a reminder, like this is not normal. No. And, you know, I've said this before and I would say it again. You know,

funding the government is not something members of Congress should get a pat on the back for. It is the bare minimum required to do their jobs. If Congress did nothing else but pass the 12 annual appropriations bills, that's all they really need to do. It is the number one job of Congress to fund the government. And continued inability to do even the most basic tasks undermines the, I think, the faith and the ability of the government. I think part of the reason why the politics have shifted on this is that the public sees Congress so poorly to begin with right now that when they hear about government shutdowns, they just think that that's what they've come to expect from their government. And it's only going to get harder, right? Because we've had all of these three shutdowns when you had Republicans in control of the entire government. And now you're going to have a divided government with Democrats in control of the House. So it's only going to get more difficult to fund the government.

That is a wrap for today. Keep up to date with all of the news of the shutdown and everything else on your local public radio station and at NPR.org. We have a special end of the year podcast coming out for you on Sunday. And of course, we'll all be back as soon as there's news you need to know about. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I'm back and I cover Congress.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.