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Government Shutdown

The Senate majority leader isn’t playing the role of deal-maker as he has in previous fights.

With the partial government shutdown closing in on two weeks and no end in sight, Mitch McConnell says Democrats are privately urging him to help find a way out of the impasse.

Not going to happen, says the Senate majority leader.

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“I don’t see how that leads to an outcome. And I want to get an outcome,” McConnell said in a brief hallway interview on Thursday. “That will be determined by the president and Senate Democrats.”

The Kentucky Republican’s portrayal of himself as secondary to both President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the bitter dispute over Trump’s border wall is an unusual role for him, and he knows it. McConnell, after all, says he’s the guy that gets the government out of shutdowns, not into them.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, McConnell worked to stave off political crisis after political crisis, from ending the long government shutdown in 2013 to avoiding a “fiscal cliff” and debt default. Democrats complained McConnell stayed in the background during those disputes until he was forced to act to prevent political damage to his own party, but in each case, he was a key player in resolving the situation. McConnell might be the Republican Democrats love to hate, but he knows how to make deals, and he can deliver the votes he promises.

But this time around Democrats are claiming the GOP leader has abandoned his central role in resolving the shutdown despite his control of the Senate floor, all while undercutting Congress’ independence from the executive branch.

As Schumer, the Senate minority leader, put it: “The power to end the shutdown is in two people’s hands: Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.”

Philosophically, McConnell sees shutdowns as a failure of governance by both parties and repeatedly predicted the GOP Congress would avoid one this time around. He even has a saying about them: “There’s no education in the second kick of the mule,” a reference to the political damage shutdowns have done to Republicans for the past two decades-plus.

Yet McConnell insisted it’s not his place to mediate this conflict after Trump rejected his short-term spending bill in December, an agreement reached with Schumer only after McConnell was led to believe Trump supported the measure. Instead, McConnell said, the whole ball game now comes down to what Pelosi and Schumer can sign onto with the president.

“It’s not complicated. I was in this role when Obama was president,” McConnell said. “[Vice President Joe] Biden and I did deals because they needed some of my votes. So now, the role is reversed. Ultimately the solution to this is a deal between the president and Nancy and Chuck, because we need some of Chuck’s votes, and obviously, we need Nancy’s support.”

McConnell’s position is that Trump, as a Republican president, doesn’t need help getting GOP votes. Those senators will be there for the president. It’s the Democratic leaders who have to find a compromise with Trump and then deliver their colleagues’ votes for that accord, according to McConnell.

“I haven’t been sidelined,” McConnell added. “There’s just no particular role for me when you have this setup.”

McConnell isn’t exactly stepping away from the dispute, and he said he’ll attend a meeting with other congressional leaders at the White House on Friday to try to jump-start stalled negotiations.

But Democrats think they can drag McConnell back into the fight now that they control the House, moving to pass bills reopening the government and daring McConnell to take them up — or face tying his majority to the shutdown.

Democrats are already making an early move to hit the Senate GOP for not doing more to stand up to Trump. With Democrats gunning to take control of the Senate in 2020, they say the public will become more and more aware that McConnell’s Senate isn’t taking up bills to reopen the government.

“The pressure will build on McConnell,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “Because right now he has contracted out the whole Senate Republican caucus to President Trump and the White House. They’re violating their constitutional duty.”

But Democrats are likely to be waiting a long time if they want McConnell to undercut Trump and try for a second time to move legislation the president doesn’t support.

Senate Republicans were caught flat-footed and on the wrong side of their party’s leader in December after Trump and House Republicans rejected a short-term funding measure to avoid the shutdown because it lacked wall money. McConnell is up for reelection in 2020 and could pay a steep political price in a primary if he were to buck Trump on the wall now.

Some Democrats speculate that perhaps the House and Senate could even override a presidential veto. But Republicans dismiss that as pure fantasy; McConnell won’t move any bills that Trump doesn’t publicly endorse first, and rank-and-file Republicans will back him up on it.

“I don’t think there’s any alternative,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) of McConnell’s shutdown positioning. “We passed a bill out of the Senate, it was voice voted, but once the president announced he wasn’t going to sign it, it’s not going to become law. We don’t have the votes to override it.”

“I don’t think there is very much he can do besides try and influence and facilitate talks,” added Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a new member of McConnell’s leadership team. “Beyond that, you’ve got two parties that need to come together and find a solution.”

McConnell has announced publicly that he’s not going to consider any legislation until Trump backs it. With the short-term bill the Senate passed in December, there were indications from Vice President Mike Pence and White House officials that the president would sign it. But after Trump rejected it, McConnell is going to need nothing short of a public commitment of support from the president.

“It’s hard to know where he stands unless he comes out publicly. With the [continuing resolution, McConnell] at least got the impression that Trump was OK with it,” said one McConnell confidant.

In the meantime, McConnell has decided not even to take up the House-passed legislative package, despite the fact that many of the bills are ones that came through the GOP-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Appropriations panel, has made clear that he doesn’t think any shutdown is worthwhile. But he cautions those who think McConnell will get caught in the middle of future battles between Trump and the Democrats.

“Don’t underestimate Mitch McConnell,” Shelby warned.

James Arkin contributed to this report.