A Funding Offer Coming?
Is Trump about to make an offer (plus the SOTU letter may have helped).
Axios reports an Exclusive: Trump plans shutdown compromise.
The offer is expected to include Trump’s $5.7 billion demand for wall money in exchange for the BRIDGE Act — which would extend protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — and also legislation to extend the legal status of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, according to a source with direct knowledge..
The devil, as always, will be in the details. My initial reaction is: as much as I think the wall is a mostly a waste of money (although I do understand the efficacy of barriers in some places), I think that legal protection for DACA and TPS recipients is a moral good that outweighs wasting money on the wall.
In regards to the Pelosi SOTU letter, this report bolsters my view that it was smart politics:
A source privy to the negotiations told me the inflection point for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was the letter from Nancy Pelosi telling Trump not to deliver the State of the Union. McConnell had been saying all along that Pelosi and Trump needed to negotiate because one needed to put a bill on the House floor and one needed to sign it — two people with singular power.
But after Pelosi’s letter, the source said, it became clear to McConnell she was “never going to get off her position and some other spark needed to happen.”
We shall see what Trump’s exact offer is this afternoon.
Update: I changed the title to “A Funding Offer Coming?” from “A Funding Deal Coming?” as “offer” is more accurate.
Update (Doug Mataconis):it’s much less than meets the eye. Trump has made his proposal, and it’s basically what Steven posted here. As I note, though,
Democrats won’t like it because it still has the $5.7 billion for the pointless wall and the DACA and TPS protections are only temporary, so they’ll think they’re giving up something for nothing.
Republicans won’t like it because it has DACA and TPS protections and they know the pointless wall will never get built anyway (which is, of course, why they have never actually wanted it) so they’ll think they’re giving up something for nothing.
But hey, it’s not all bad–at least Trump will finally be doing something that unites both sides…
CNN is reporting that the Democrats are expected to reject Trump’s offer.
Frankly Trump’s track record on so called deals does not, nor should not, encourage anyone to trust him. Just ask the numerous banks and businesses or prior owners of businesses that lost all to him.
He is not to be trusted with any deal that he can use an executive order to destroy, for he will do that, of this I have no doubt. Then he will brag about it.
I, who haven’t said a kind word about Dems in a loooong time, do not think the Dems will be dumb enough to take this deal. But they should counter-offer.
No deal. Full path to citizenship for Dreamers and we can talk about his 5 billion. But for some ‘deal’ involving Trump? There are no deals with Trump, he’s a pathological liar who is incapable of sticking to his word. So, no. Full path to citizenship in the form of legislation passed by both houses and signed into law, with appropriate funding and conditions, or not a dollar.
@CSK:
I would say that means that Trump has not negotiated a deal in private with Pelosi and is now announcing it. If he were seriously negotiating he would have done that. He will either pontificate in an attempt to rally his flagging public support or announce his declaration of emergency executive authority in this matter.
1.) You don’t negotiate with terrorists. Even if it was a good offer, as long as the government is shutdown, nothing is up for negotiation.
2.) There was already a negotiated deal. Why should Democrats trust he’ll keep his word and sign this deal when he still hasn’t kept his word and signed the deal he agreed to in December?
3.) A deal negotiated between the Republican President, the Republican VP, and the Republican Congressional Leadership with no input at all from Democrats is not a compromise.
@Michael Reynolds:
And not just for Dreamers.
Seriously, pounce.
The house should wait for McConnell to pass Trump’s offer in the senate, ammend it back to the original deal and pass that in the house, and then go to conference committee and insist on the original deal.
BTW: a better title for this post should have been: “Offer Coming” not “Deal”
@dazedandconfused:
This is almost certainly true. Despite all the bravado, he doesn’t know how to engage in real negotiations.
@James Pearce:
This seems the likely outcome.
Ann Coulter is really, really angry with Trump. Her Tweets:
“Trump proposes amnesty! We voted for Trump and got Jeb!”
“Trump’s solution: Let’s just amnesty them!”
@CSK: Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.
@Mikey:
Trumpkins are gonna be working overtime to rationalize this one. Will Trump retract in view of what Coulter said and what Hannity and Limbaugh probably will say?
@James Pearce:
@James Pearce:
Hey James, just out of curiosity, can you remind me what created this opportunity for the Democrats to pounce and make a counter offer?
You know, what led Trump to make the first concessions and shift in position in this negotiation?
Because, it’s amazing to me how this opportunity for good (and a win) you think the Dems should seize apparently seems to have materialized out of no where.
Perhaps you can clear this mystery up for me.
(ps, any more thoughts on the bet? $30 — $10 for each clause — the pot goes to charities of winner’s choice)
He really is Soylent Green. Trump repealed those DACA protections that were in place and of course he will now propose to make them {{temporarily}} effective again, until such time when he will threaten to rescind them in the next hostage crisis.
@mattbernius:
Trump wanting to play deal-maker. He exposed his belly. Rip into it with your claws.
Dems are now saying no negotiations until the government is open, so I’m not sure they’ll counteroffer or pounce.
(Also, I thought I accepted the bet.)
Well the offer is on the table and it’s basically what Steven relates in the post. As I note in my post, it’s less than meets the eye.
@Stormy Dragon:
Eh, I’d take a good offer. This is not a good enough offer.
@Gustopher:
Ditto. This offer is b.s. He’s offering nothing. And there is no point making a counter, not with a pathological liar lacking any sense of honor. You might as well negotiate with a rattlesnake. A path to citizenship for Dreamers, passed, signed, funded, with regulations agreed in advance and codified into law. Then he gets half of his ask, nothing more.
@Gustopher:
This is my take as well.
@Gustopher:
“Eh, I’d take a good offer. This is not a good enough offer.”
My thoughts, too.
@Stormy Dragon:
I thought any spending bill had to originate in the House. If I’m right about that, the asymmetry is working against the Democrats here, precisely because they can’t do what you just suggested.
@Raymond Smith: What you said, sir. And we are not alone in our understanding of the trustworthiness of ‘individual-1’. From this AM’s NYT article on this ‘offer’ we learn that Sen McConnell “needed a ‘public reassurance’ that Mr Trump would sign it….”
Once burnt, twice shy.
What a way to govern, eh?
@DrDaveT: it wouldn’t surprise me if they can do some kind of trick like take a bill that was passed in the house strip all the language out and replace it with Trump’s bullshit. If Nancy can keep all the Democratic senators on her side though, McConnell won’t be able to get the 60 votes to overcome a legislative filibuster.
As if a ‘public reassurance’ by Trump means anything. There’s a bastardization of a saying attributed to Sam Goldwyn “A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Explaining the problem for Mr McConnell, eh? He’s stuck between his caucus and ‘individual 1’ and standing in quicksand. Delicious!
@James Pearce:
Which only happened because the Democrats did what you thought was a terrible strategy, and stood up to Trump on that issue. If they had done what you were suggesting, “just given him his money,” then they would have gotten nothing.
So perhaps — just perhaps — they actually know what they are doing… (Time will tell).
Cool, I don’t think you had officially said that and there were some logistics I wasn’t sure we agreed on.