Trump doesn’t want to deal with a government shutdown this year, so he’s telling Republicans not to include the DACA fix in any spending bills before the end of the year:
POLITICO – President Donald Trump stressed to Senate Republicans Thursday that a legislative fix on Dreamers should not be included in any spending bill to stave off a government shutdown in December.
“The president made it very clear that he doesn’t want to see any DACA legislation as part of a year-end package,” said Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, one of more than half a dozen Senate Republicans who attended a meeting at the White House.
Democrats have eyed the must-pass funding bill as a key opportunity to codify into law the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has shielded hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Trump said in September that he would wind down the Obama-era program next year, and Democrats have been pressuring Republicans — some even threatening a shutdown if necessary — to enact legislation granting legal status to Dreamers by the end of the year.
I don’t understand this. From everything I’ve seen, many Republicans do want to enshrine this into law. There are some that don’t, sure. But I’m betting there’s enough Republicans who do that it will be easy, with Democrat help, to pass it in both the Senate and the House. So why is Trump so afraid of a ‘government shutdown’ on this issue?
Perhaps he’s worried that if there ends up being a government shutdown for whatever reason, that it will derail Republican efforts to pass anything significant in his first year as president. And the money he wants in his spending bills won’t happen either.