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WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump tried to press Democrats on Monday to include funds for his controversial border wall with Mexico in spending legislation as lawmakers worked to avoid a looming shutdown of the federal government.

The battle offers the Republican president, whose approval ratings have slid since he took office, a chance to score his first big legislative win or to be mired in a Washington stalemate as he marks 100 days in the job on Saturday.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but a White House-backed bill to gut former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, failed to gather full party support and imploded last month.

If no deal is agreed on spending, parts of the federal government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. (0401 GMT) on Saturday. Trump is demanding that Congress include funds for the construction of the wall, which he made a key theme of his 2016 presidential campaign and which he says will stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States.

The funding bill will need 60 votes to clear the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats, meaning at least some Democrats will have to get behind the bill.

"The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)! If ... the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be!" Trump tweeted on Monday.

Trump has said Mexico will repay the United States for the wall if Congress funds it first. But the Mexican government is adamant it will not finance a wall and Trump has not laid out a plan to compel Mexico to pay. Department of Homeland Security internal estimates have placed the total cost of a border barrier at about $21.6 billion.

Aside from inflaming relations with a major trading partner, the planned wall has angered Democrats. They showed no sign of softening their opposition on Monday and sought to place responsibility for any shutdown squarely on Trump and congressional Republicans.

"We were right on the path to getting something done, a good thing that both parties could support, and he throws a monkey wrench in," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told MSNBC in an interview. "That's not the way to govern."

Republican aides in Congress said negotiations on a bill to fund the government from April 28 to Sept. 30 were continuing, but they provided no timetable for unveiling legislation, or guarantees that such a bill could be passed.

A Democratic congressional aide close to the negotiations said there were no breakthroughs over the weekend toward a deal. A shutdown would have far-reaching consequences, ranging from the furlough of many federal workers to the closing of national parks.

One senior Republican congressional aide said that if not enough progress is made by Thursday, Congress would likely have to try to push forward a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government operating while negotiations continue. Leading Democrats have said they would support such a measure only if there was progress in the private talks.

Analysts said other key parts of Trump's agenda, including a proposal to cut corporate and individual income taxes, could be endangered if Republicans and Democrats fail to agree on a measure to fund the government, known as a continuing resolution.

"If Republicans struggle to pass a CR, we think it signals that the party will struggle to pass a budget resolution later in the year and the budget resolution is a prerequisite to passing tax reform via reconciliation rules," Brian Gardner, a policy analyst at financial firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods, said in a research note. He was referring to using a procedure that would allow Republicans to win legislation without Democratic support that normally would be needed in the Senate.

Trump said last week he plans a big announcement on Wednesday on tax reform. An administration official said it would consist of "broad principles and priorities."

OBAMACARE FUNDING

A Republican congressional aide said over the weekend that Democrats may agree to some aspects of the border wall, including new surveillance equipment and access roads, estimated to cost around $380 million.

"But Democrats want the narrative that they dealt him a loss on the wall," the aide said, adding it would be difficult to bring any of the minority party on board with new construction on the southwest border.

It is unclear whether Trump would sign a deal that did not include money for the wall.

On Sunday, he appeared to dangle the prospect of funding some elements of Obamacare in exchange for Democrats' support in the spending talks. He tweeted that the 2010 healthcare restructuring, which was Obama's signature domestic achievement and which enabled millions more Americans to secure healthcare coverage, could fail sooner than thought without an infusion.

The White House says it has offered to include $7 billion in Obamacare subsidies that allow low-income people to pay for health insurance in exchange for Democratic backing for $1.5 billion in funding to start construction of the barrier.

Last month's failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, a goal of most Republicans since the law was passed seven years ago, dealt a major blow to Trump. His national approval rating hovered around 43 percent in the latest Reuters/Ipsos polling.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu and Richard Cowan; Writing by Paul Simao; Editing by Frances Kerry)

WASHINGTON Former Fox News anchor and correspondent Heather Nauert will be the new U.S. State Department spokeswoman, the State Department said in a statement on Monday.

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump this week will sign new executive orders before he completes his first 100 days in office, including two on energy and the environment, which would make it easier for the United States to develop energy on and offshore, a White House official said on Sunday.

Original post:
Trump pushes Democrats on border wall as government shutdown looms - Reuters

In 2016, Priorities USA Action spent more than $200 million to elect Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Senate and came up short.

Its message for 2018: Democrats can, and should, shoot for the moon.

[Priorities USA positions itself as center of gravity for the left in the Trump era]

In a new survey, taken in the first week of April by Global Strategy Group and Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, Priorities USA found that Democrats who tend to sit home in midterm elections were unusually motivated to turn out in 2018. Fifty-eight percent of drop-off voters said they were extremely motivated and enthusiastic about voting in the 2018 elections, rating their interest as nine or 10 on a 10-point scale. An additional 22 percent of the voters were somewhat motivated to turn out.

These voters are ready to turn out, said Guy Cecil, Priorities USAs chairman. I was at the DSCC in 2006 when Democrats took back the Senate; I was at the DSCC when Republicans took it back in 2014. There wasnt a circumstance where I saw eight out of 10 drop-off voters expressing interest in the election.

The polling sample included 402 Democrats who didnt vote in 2016 and 401 Democrats who voted in 2016 but tend to skip midterms. The latter group, they found, was more likely(61 percent to 56 percent) to be extremely motivated. African American voters, who Democrats have found difficult to turn out without Barack Obama on the ballot, were the least likely to be extremely motivated just 49 percent.

Although Democrats have criticized their 2016 strategy as focusing too much on Trump and too little on lunchpail economic issues, the Priorities polling found that just 8 percent of drop-off voters had a favorable view of Trump. The Republican Party was less unpopular, but still toxic, with 77 percent of the voters viewing it unfavorably.

Trump is such a hot button for these voters that when we ask them to volunteer the most important issue facing the country, the most commonly volunteered answer is Donald Trump (16 percent) rather than any specific policy issue, the pollsters wrote.

To Cecil, those numbers combined with strong Democratic turnout in Aprils special elections suggested that the party didnt need to be as conservative as in past elections about modeling the 2018 electorate. Last year, when Democrats were surprised by Trump, they saw white voters who hadnt turned out in previous elections showing up and destroying their model, leading to upset defeats for Clinton in the Midwest and Florida.

As we think about turnout numbers, a lot of time our polls start with likely voter screen and micro-target from there, Cecil said. Democrats should be taking an expansionist view for 2018. We should be looking at voters who didnt turn out in 2016. We should be looking at non-registrants who are suddenly expressing interest in this election.

Excerpt from:
Priorities USA: Democrats can expand the 2018 electorate - Washington Post

The chickens are coming home to roost for Oregons Democrats whove controlled the Legislature and governorship for decades. After pursuing new programs and increases in existing programs, we find the state facing a deficit in the range of $1.8 billion, despite record tax revenues.

Now theyre threatening to punish the Republican legislators for their own fiscal irresponsibilities by drastic cuts in schools, health care and other programs. Obamacare was embraced by Democrats by their expansion of Medicaid. While the federal government pays the majority of the costs, the state is facing an $800 million shortfall and the Democrats are now threatening to sharply curtail Medicaid, the program that they readily promoted.

The Democrats refuse to tackle the Cadillac health plans or Public Employees Retirement System because they dont want to bite the hand that feeds them. The public unions are lambasting the cut in teacher positions while failing to acknowledge that health benefits and PERS costs are the primary cause.

Eugene, a Democrat stronghold, has added programs for the so-called homeless, drawing many transients to the area. Now the city is having to take measures the dog ban, for example to eliminate undesirable people from downtown.

The current fiscal mess in Oregon lies squarely on the shoulders of the ruling Democrats. Maybe we need to start a massive movement to vote them out of office and to get government back on a solid footing, with roads, schools, police and fire protection our top priorities.

Bill Stoebig

Eugene

More Letters in the editor's mailbag articles

Mail letters to: Mailbag, 3500 Chad Drive, Eugene, OR 97408-7348

E-mail: rgletters@registerguard.com

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Blame fiscal mess on Democrats - The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD Amid a national push by unions and worker advocates for a $15 minimum wage, Illinois Democrats hope to pass an ambitious hike during the spring legislative session, despite a warning from Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that he opposes an increase of any kind.

The proposal would lift the state's minimum wage from its current $8.25 to $15 over the next five years, a more accelerated leap than previous adjustments in Illinois. It also would constitute a larger jump than increases toward $15 approved last year in New York and California, where the rates had been $9 and $10, respectively.

But, as with previous efforts in Illinois, the measure is likely to be tied up in the state's electoral politics.

Sponsors of the legislation acknowledge Rauner's opposition but have signaled they want to force him to act on the measure ahead of next year's gubernatorial election, in which he already faces half a dozen Democratic challengers.

"We will get a really good opportunity to see where the governor stands," said Rep. Will Guzzardi, a Chicago Democrat sponsoring the wage bill in the House. "Does he side with the 2.3 million people in this state who need a raise now or does he side with the big corporations?"

In the past, Rauner has said he supported minor increases in the minimum wage. But he told the audience at a business forum on April 13 that requiring employers to raise pay is out of the question.

"That's not gonna happen," Rauner said. "Companies will just leave."

Democrats say they have considerable support for the $15-per-hour measure in the House, and expect a floor vote in May. The Senate is also considering two minimum wage bills, one similar to Guzzardi's and a less ambitious one that would raise the wage to $11 by 2021.

In 2014, Democrats placed an advisory referendum on the Illinois ballot asking voters whether they supported a minimum wage increase in an effort to motivate their base to go to the polls. The referendum secured 67 percent of the vote in the same election that Rauner won his first term in office. During the campaign, Rauner was criticized by his rival, former Gov. Pat Quinn, for statements supporting a reduction of the minimum wage.

Illinois has raised its minimum wage above the federal floor, currently $7.25 per hour, twice in recent history first in 2003 and again in 2006 to $8.25, where it's remained since 2011. That leaves Illinois with a lower rate than 20 others nationwide, but above every state it borders.

Business leaders claim increasing the rate puts Illinois at a competitive disadvantage, driving companies across state lines or forcing them to reduce staff. Labor unions and other allies of the national "Fight for $15" campaign contend raising the minimum wage boosts the economy by putting more money into pockets of low-wage workers, decreasing reliance on government assistance.

Advocates say anything less than $15 falls far short of the cost of living for millions of Illinoisans. They point to research including a 2016 report from the University of Illinois that shows at least 34 percent of Illinois workers earn less than $15 an hour, many of them while helping to support a family.

The report projects an increase to $15 would result in just a 0.78 percent employment decline while yielding an extra $2.4 billion in tax revenue.

Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the university who co-authored the report, said research on previous increases indicates companies are able to recoup additional labor costs by raising prices a few cents on the dollar and benefit from enhanced worker productivity and purchasing power.

Some business organizations, including the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, oppose any increase above federal levels. Others, like the Illinois Restaurant Association, are willing to consider a more incremental adjustment something some economics experts also recommend, warning against potential job loss resulting from more substantial leaps.

Sen. Kimberly Lightford of Maywood, the Democrat sponsoring both Senate proposals, has been advocating for a higher rate since 1999 when she first proposed what became Illinois' 2003 increase. She said if the federal minimum had risen with inflation since its peak in 1968, it would be $11 today.

"I cannot sit back and allow millions of working people to receive no wage increase at all because it could not be the $15," she said.

The bills are HB198 , SB1738 and SB2.

See original here:
Illinois Democrats push ambitious minimum wage hike despite opposition from Gov. Rauner - The Southern

We'll entertain our thought experiment in a moment, but first, some background: If Congress misses its Friday deadline to pass legislation to fund the federal government, we will have our first Trump-era partial government shutdown ('partial' because thelarge majority of federal spending is already on autopilot). Republicans forced awildly unpopular shutdown in 2013 in a quixotic attempt to withhold funding from Obamacare -- an outcome to which the president and his party would not agree. The GOP's tactic paid zero policy dividends an was heavily panned by voters; that said, it did not end up hindering the party's ability to win asmashing victory in the following year's midterm elections. Now it's theDemocrats who find themselves in the driver's seat of a potential shutdown. They are pledging to block any spending bill that funds certain Trump priorities. Battle lines are drawn, negotiationsare underway, andallegedoffers are being bandied about:

Note the framing here. When the shoe was on the other foot four years ago, did the media report on "Obama's demands that could derail Republican support" for a bipartisan deal? No, the onus was laid on "poison pill" items being pushedby the GOP that Obama said he could never accept. Applying that same standard today, it's Democrats' insistent opposition to fundingborder security, and toprotecting sanctuary cities, and to maintaining a taxpayergravy train to ascandal-plagued majorpolitical donor, that could force a shutdown. And thus many of the very sameDemocrats who treated a GOP-triggered shutdown as an apocalypse are now open to trying one of their own -- perhaps confident that the media will help them blame their opponents for the outcome, and that the public is generally inclined to finger the 'anti-government' party for any funding impasse. Meanwhile, the Republican Senator who is perhapsmost associated with embracing shutdown tactics is amusingly wringing his hands and preemptively blastingDemocrats for toying with the idea. Yet everyone involves seems to wonder why people distrust the press and generallydespise Washington.

The vote-counting reality is that even though Republicans control the Senate with 52 votes, they'll need at least eight more to advance a government funding bill. The legislative filibuster remains firmly intact, even after theReid Rule was invoked on the Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination. And despite holding a sizable majority in the House of Representatives, Republicans will likely need Democratic votes to pass funding with a simple majority due to opposition to spending increases from fiscal conservatives. So Democrats have leverage on both ends of Capitol Hill, and they know it. If a deal isn't reached, their bet is that they can muddy the waters and pin a shutdown on the party in power, even if they're chiefly responsible for it. But putting the blame game off to one side, let's presume for the sake of this argument that the parties will be unable to settle on a plan to stave off a partial shutdown. Might the Trump administration consider eschewing the Democrat-inspired tradition of recent years of engaging in "shutdown theater"? This is a practice, employed by Presidents Clinton and Obama when locked in government funding fights with Congressional Republicans, in which the presiding presidential administration seeks to make the consequences of a partial federal shutdown as publicly-known and acutely-painful as possible. Two examples that exemplify this strategy are Obama ordering barricades erected at national monuments in Washington during the last shutdown, blocking tourists from seeing sights that would otherwise have been easily accessible to the public. This led to civil disobedience from war veterans:

Setting up these temporary fences actually required proactive government effort, which seemed counterintuitive in a shutdown environment -- but the whole point was to show ordinary Americans that life cannot go on as normal in the midst of a partisan Beltway "crisis." The other instance that comes to mind is a quote from former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who was asked about a Republican proposal to prioritize federal spending on broadly-popular and more essential programs in the midst of a partial shutdown. The GOP had suggested that certain dollars ought to go to the front of the spending line while a broader funding plan was hammered out: Financing interest on the national debt, maintaining paychecks to the troops, ensuring Social Security payments, etc. Asked specifically about Republicans' request to also prioritize NIH research (a favorite demagogic pressure point for Democrats) Reid infamously replied witha revealing question of his own: "Why would we want to do that?" In other words, why make sensible adult decisions to mitigate the possibly harmful impacts of a partial shutdown when there are people to harm and voters to scare for political gain?

Let me stipulate that the political temptation to pursue this approach is understandably powerful, and the incentive structure obvious: Whip up the public in opposition to a shutdown, and convince them that your opposition is to blame. This, in turn, ratchets up internal pressure on the other 'team' to end the stalemate as to avoid lasting negative political fallout. Their desperation gives you the upper hand to resolve the fight on terms that are most favorable to you. But considering that (a) Democrats should shoulder the disproportionate blame for this impending shutdown, and (b) the party of Big Government will continue to use shutdown scare tactics to win spending standoffs so long as that dynamic works in their favor, perhaps the Trump White House could consider a different approach. Iexplored this alternative on Twitter the other day:

The president and his allies could express requisitedisappointmentand frustration over Democrats' shutdownwhile making it consistently clear that Republicans are taking action to ensure that Democratic recklessness impacts as few people as possible. The troops, Social Security benefits, NIH research, and interest on the national debt would all come first. National parks and monuments would remain open. The sun would rise in the east and set in the west. Life would go on, with the overwhelming majority of Americans experiencing no adverse effects whatsoever. Republicans could still remind voters that there's a "shutdown" underway, that Democrats forced it, and that they're working to end it -- but they could also highlight how cynical the previous administration was by going out of its way to amplify and magnify harm for political advantage. This could be, to borrow a phrase from our most recent president, a "teachable moment" for the American people: The sky need not fall during these partial shutdowns, and politicians who are invested in creating that impression aren't to be trusted. And maybe, just maybe, the federal government isn't nearly as crucial to the smooth functioning of everyday American life as Statists would like people to believe.

More:
Idea: If Democrats Shut Down the Government, Should Trump Make It As Painless As Possible? - Townhall