Arizona congressman says ongoing shutdown is in Trump’s hands

PHOENIX — An Arizona Democratic congressman said the government shutdown is now in President Donald Trump’s hands after lawmakers passed a bill last week that would fund it.

“It’s always been in the president’s hands and it’s even more so now with what we did (Thursday),” U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Friday.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday to fund eight departments through Sept. 30 and reopen the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8.

But Trump has vowed not to sign it since it does not include the $5 billion he wants for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also will not bring the bill to the floor, saying it is up to Trump and House Democrats to figure out a deal.

Grijalva said McConnell should “be on the record dealing with this” as 800,000-plus people were working without pay for the 16th day of the partial government shutdown.

“As each day goes by, the burden is not only to those federal workers which are working on furlough, (but to) Americans (who) are not going to be receiving services that they should be,” Grijalva said, pointing to departments like the U.S. Coast Guard, the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security.

“The list goes on and on.”

With the Democrats taking over the majority in the House, Grijalva said their responsibility is to “pass bills with the intention of opening the government up.

“I think the new majority did the best they could,” he added. “And that was to pass the bills that reopened the government agencies.”

White House officials affirmed Trump’s funding request in a letter to Capitol Hill after a meeting Sunday with senior congressional aides led by Vice President Mike Pence at the White House complex yielded little progress. The letter from Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell Vought sought funding for a “steel barrier on the Southwest border.”

The letter includes a request for $800 million for “urgent humanitarian needs,” a reflection of the growing anxiety over migrants traveling to the border — which the White House said Democrats raised in the meetings. And it repeats some existing funding requests for detention beds and security officers, which have already been panned by Congress and would likely find resistance among House Democrats.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to begin passing individual bills to reopen agencies in the coming days, starting with the Treasury Department to ensure people receive their tax refunds. That effort is designed to squeeze Senate Republicans, some of whom are growing increasingly anxious about the extended shutdown.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Ashley Flood and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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