WASHINGTON – As the partial government shutdown continues, the White House and congressional Republicans awaited a Democratic response to their “counteroffer” in negotiations over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a southern border wall.

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that the offer fell between the $1.3 billion for border security that Democrats supported in legislation and the $5 billion for border-wall construction that Trump seeks.

But because the Senate won’t meet to debate until at least Thursday, Mulvaney said the shutdown could continue into the new Congress, which begins Jan. 3.

“I don’t think things are going to move very quickly,” Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday.”

The White House provided what he called a counteroffer Saturday to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “The ball right now is in their corner,” Mulvaney said.

Spending talks continued amid a weekend of football and basketball games, with little outcry over the shutdown. But Mulvaney said because Monday and Tuesday are federal holidays, “Wednesday is really the first day that this kicks in.”

To keep Grand Canyon National Park open for a week, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed an executive order to provide $64,000 that will keep the park and essential functions such as trash collection, restrooms and ranger services. Tracking of Santa’s sleigh on Christmas eve will continue, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. 

Trump postponed his end-of-the-year trip to Florida and most lawmakers have left the capital ahead of the Christmas holiday. He tweeted Sunday morning that a wall would help stop drugs, gangs and criminal elements from entering the country.

“This is what having a president who is nontraditional, who’s a different kind of president looks like,”  Mulvaney said. “He is not going to be an ordinary president, and that’s not what people wanted when they elected him.”  

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the outgoing chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union”  the shutdown was “unnecessary” and “juvenile” because both parties want to work on immigration issues.

Corker noted that Democrats and Republicans supported legislation to provide $25 billion for border security while also dealing with young immigrants who arrived with parents who entered the country illegally. The legislation wasn’t ultimately approved. But in contrast, Corker said the shutdown fight is over much less.

“This is a made-up fight,” Corker said. “This is something that is unnecessary. It’s a spectacle. And, candidly, it’s juvenile.”

The shutdown takes place during an especially chaotic time in the Trump administration, including the resignation Thursday of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis after Trump announced withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, a plunging stock market and Trump attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Schumer had blamed the shutdown on Trump’s “two-week temper tantrum” over border-wall funding and said the Senate has no interest “in swindling American taxpayers for an unnecessary, ineffective and wasteful policy.”

“President Trump, if you want to open the government, you must abandon the wall, plain and simple,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said senators would be told when a vote was scheduled and that “negotiations will continue” in the meantime. The Senate next plans to meet Thursday for debate. The House has instructed lawmakers no votes are expected until at least Thursday.

At the White House, Trump  huddled Saturday with his advisers and with a small group of GOP lawmakers to discuss border security but did not include any Democrats in the meeting. Among the Republicans who were invited were members of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, which has urged Trump not to abandon the fight for border wall funding.

“This is not about the wall for Democrats. It’s not even about immigration for Democrats,” tweeted Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, who was invited to the meeting. “This is about denying (Trump) a win on a signature agenda item that he promised the American people.”

The latest shutdown is the third one this year – and the third of Trump’s presidency – and was triggered just after midnight Friday when the budget standoff caused funding to lapse for nine federal departments and several smaller agencies. A quarter of the government shut down, and some 800,000 government employees were forced to go on furlough or work without pay.

Agencies impacted include the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, Customs and Border Patrol and the IRS, as well as national parks and forests. In all, the nine departments affected are Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development.

The White House said federal employees in those departments would be paid for days worked before the shutdown began. The pay period ended on Saturday, and those checks will go out on Dec. 28. Employees deemed “essential” and forced to work during the shutdown will be paid once federal funds start flowing again, the Trump administration said, although that would require congressional action.

Meanwhile, behind-the-scenes negotiations continue – primarily at the staff level – in an attempt to break the funding impasse and end the shutdown. The House has passed a bill that includes $5.7 billion in funding for border security, including a wall. But the proposal is stalled in the Senate and cannot pass without the support of Democrats.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted a border wall is needed to keep the country safe.

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