NEW YORK TIMES – As congressional leaders urged their colleagues to support a bipartisan border deal, President Trump said on Wednesday that he did not want to see the government shut down at midnight Friday, indicating that he was leaning toward signing the compromise legislation.
“I don’t want to see a shutdown. A shutdown would be a terrible thing,” Mr. Trump said, later hinting that he had “options that most people don’t understand” to build his border wall without congressional approval.
The remarks, which were made to reporters in the Oval Office as Mr. Trump met with the president of Colombia, inched him toward embracing a bipartisan border deal that fell far short of his demands for wall funding. But without a shutdown as leverage, he appeared to have little choice but to sign it if it clears Congress.
On Capitol Hill, 17 negotiators rushed to turn the border compromise into voluminous legislation, while both Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, encouraged their troops to support it. The 1,159-page bill and a full report from negotiators were filed Wednesday minutes before midnight; the Senate is expected to vote on the measure on Thursday, followed by the House.
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