More and more news reports are indicating that President Trump will avert another government shutdown by signing a spending bill that will allocate far less money to construction of a border wall than he wants. The bill that will be placed before him includes $1.375 billion for the construction of another 55 miles of wall along the border, far less than the $5.7 billion that Trump had requested. If Trump does sign the bill, it would be a big loss for him, making the last shutdown meaningless and strengthening the Democrats in their future negotiations.
Trump may still decide at the last minute not to sign the bill. That’s the joy of having a real maverick for President, you never know what he’s going to do. If he doesn’t sign the bill then the government will shut down at the end of the day Friday, throwing everything back up into the air. Negotiations would have to restart, and no one would be happy.
In a way that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, keeping Democrats from being able to get anything done aside from trying to get the government funded. And it doesn’t harm Trump, who has become more and more single-minded recently about getting the wall built. After all, his position on immigration was a large part of what got him voted into office, and many of his supporters are adamant that a tougher border wall be built.
But even if Trump does sign the bill it wouldn’t mean that he wouldn’t get the funding he wants to build the wall. He could always do what he had threatened to do originally, declare a national emergency in order to shift funds from other areas of government to fund the wall. Many people had advised him against doing that in the past, but with Democrats in Congress digging in their heels maybe it’s past time for him to do what he probably wanted to do all along.