Trump hints at backing funding deal to dodge gov’t shutdown

A reported deal between Democrats and Republicans includes $1.375bn in funds for ‘barriers’ on the US-Mexico border.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday edged toward backing a deal in Congress on funding for a barrier on the Mexican border, but left open the possibility that disputes over the wall could still cause a partial government shutdown by the weekend.
Trump, widely blamed for a record-long five-week shutdown that ended in January, said he did not want to see federal agencies close again because of fighting over funds for the wall, one of his signature campaign promises in the 2016 election.
But the Republican president fell short of committing himself to backing the congressional deal, which would keep the government open but not give Trump the $5.7bn he seeks for the wall.“I don’t want to see a shutdown. A shutdown would be a terrible thing. I think a point was made with the last shutdown. People realised how bad the border is, how unsafe the border is, and I think a lot of good points were made,” Trump told reporters.
Congress, which faces a tight deadline to pass legislation to avert another US government shutdown, is considering a compromise measure that does not deliver all the funds Trump had demanded to build the wall.
Although Democrats have vowed to block Trump’s original request for $5.7bn for a wall, which they call immoral and ineffective, they have expressed their willingness to sign off on a deal that includes funding for more “barriers”.
Since coming to office, Trump has overseen a crackdown on immigration, sliced the number of refugees coming to the United States and sought to block travellers from several Muslim-majority countries.
On Tuesday, the Republican president said he was not happy with the deal and he did not rule out a possible veto of the legislation.
The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives could vote as soon as Wednesday evening, a senior aide said, despite not yet having produced a written copy of the agreement reached by congressional negotiators on Monday night. The accord must also be passed by the Republican-controlled Senate and signed by Trump by the midnight Friday expiration of a stopgap measure that ended the longest federal shutdown in US history.
The measure’s fate in the House was far from certain given the risk that conservatives and liberals will oppose the compromise for different reasons. Source: aljazeera.com