From The Wall Street Journal
President Trump said Friday he had reached a deal with congressional leaders to reopen the government for three weeks while negotiations over border security funding continue, marking at least a temporary concession by the president to Democrats.
Speaking in the Rose Garden, Mr. Trump said he would sign a bill to open the government until Feb. 15 and start negotiations between the House and Senate over a full-year bill funding the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the border.
“After 36 days of spirited debate and dialogue, I have seen and heard from enough Democrats and Republicans that they are willing to put partisanship aside, I think,” Mr. Trump said.
The stopgap spending bill will provide no immediate funding for a border wall. Mr. Trump said he would continue to push for funding for such a barrier in the next three weeks, declaring: “Walls shouldn’t be controversial.”
He thanked federal workers for going more than a month without pay and said he would ensure they received back pay “very quickly or as soon as possible.”
The shutdown began Dec. 22 over a clash between the president and Democrats over whether to fund a border wall, which Mr. Trump says is key to national security and Democrats say is unnecessary. The president had considered declaring a national emergency to try to divert funds from elsewhere in the government to fund a wall, which he described Friday as a “powerful alternative” that he didn’t want to use.
Mr. Trump warned that if no deal is reached by Feb. 15, the government could shut down a second time. He also threatened to address border security unilaterally if no agreement is struck by that point.
If a stopgap spending bill is passed and signed on Friday, it will reopen the government on the 35th day of the impasse.
On Friday, federal workers missed their second full paychecks. The Federal Aviation Administration also ordered delays at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and other major airports, citing staffing shortages—the first sign the shutdown is interfering with the nation’s air travel.
For weeks, Democrats have urged the president to reopen the government while negotiations continue. Republican senators have been talking with increasing urgency in recent days about passing a stopgap spending bill.
The stopgap spending bill would include an extension of border security funding at current levels, which includes $1.3 billion for border security but not expressly for a wall.
Senate leaders said Friday afternoon they expected the measure to clear the chamber on a voice vote later in the day, which would enable them to skip the chamber’s time-consuming procedures. The House has said it will move swiftly to consider the bill after it passes the Senate. It could also approve the bill on a voice vote, provided that no one objects.
The deal Mr. Trump announced is a retreat from the hard-line stance he had taken throughout the monthlong shutdown. Mr. Trump dropped his insistence on border-wall funding as a condition of reopening the government, at least while negotiations play out over the next three weeks.
Just three days earlier, a senior White House official briefed reporters on the status of the shutdown talks and insisted that Mr. Trump believed he was winning the debate over wall funding.
“He thinks the public is with him,” the official said at the time.
