This post is by Ken Meyer from Mediaite
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A new report suggests that House and Senate negotiations might be about to reach a border security deal that President Donald Trump could be willing to accept, even if it doesn’t allocate the funding he’s looking for to make a border wall.
The Washington Examiner reports that Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) recently said at a closed-door meeting that he sent an optimistic message to Trump for a possible, new bipartisan agreement. Shelby supposedly described this as “serious negotiations” for a deal that allows funding for new security technology, increased border patrol agents, and expansions of existing barricades with some new, targeted area fencing.
However, the deal will probably not yield the amount of funding Trump demanded throughout the government shutdown, nor will it cover the distance on the border he presumably had in mind.
From the article:
Shelby would not disclose whether Trump would agree to less the $5.7 billion he has requested for border barriers, or a wall, as he calls it. But he hinted Trump may be willing to make a deal on price. “It was the most positive meeting I’ve had with him regarding numbers,” Shelby said. “He seemed to be very reasonable and, I thought, urging us to get a legislative conclusion to that. He’s being very reasonable but I can’t get into the details.”The government came out of the longest shutdown in national history last month, but if Trump and Congress are unable to reach a deal on federal funding by the end of the current continuing resolution, the government could shutdown once again. Trump appealed for a border wall during his State of the Union speech this week, though he also recently threatened to declare a national emergency in order to appropriate government funds if Congress fails to fund the project. — —
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