Schumer, Pelosi: Trump got ‘what he wanted’ with shutdown

Democratic congressional leaders hammered President Trump early Saturday as large swaths of the federal government shut down after Congress failed to reach a deal over funding for Trump’s border wall.

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) panned the funding lapse, which they’ve dubbed the “Trump shutdown,” while ripping what they called Trump’s “temper tantrum.”

“President Trump has said more than 25 times that he wanted a shutdown and now he has gotten what he wanted,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement shortly after the midnight deadline to fund the government passed.

“Democrats have offered Republicans multiple proposals to keep the government open, including one that already passed the Senate unanimously, and all of which include funding for strong, sensible, and effective border security — not the president’s ineffective and expensive wall,” they continued.

{mosads}”If President Trump and Republicans choose to continue this Trump Shutdown, the new House Democratic majority will swiftly pass legislation to re-open government in January.”

Democratic leaders have said Trump alone is to blame for the shutdown after he declared during a televised meeting last week with Pelosi and Schumer that he’d “take the mantle” of a shutdown over his border wall.

Trump attempted to pre-empt Democratic arguments that he was to blame for the looming shutdown Friday night, arguing in a video released hours after the House and Senate adjourned for the evening that it was up to Democrats to bring the funding lapse to an end.

“Now it’s up to the Senate, and it’s really up to the Democrats, because we need their votes,” Trump said in the video. “We’re going to have a shutdown — there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“Call it a Democrat shutdown, call it whatever you want,” he added. “Let’s work together, let’s be bipartisan and let’s get it done. The shutdown hopefully will not last long.”

Members of both chambers are expected to continue discussions on Saturday on a potential path forward to end the shutdown, though a Housed-passed plan to include $5 billion for Trump’s border barrier has hit a wall in the Senate.

The latest shutdown affects about 25 percent of the federal government. White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney sent a memo to federal agencies late Friday telling them to execute preparations for a shutdown.

The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Treasury, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency are all slated to be impacted by the expiring funding.