President Donald Trump has said he would “love to see a shutdown” if Democrats do not meet his demands for tighter border security.
“I’d love to see a shut down if we can’t get this stuff taken care of,” Mr Trump told reporters after a meeting with law-enforcement officials to discuss gang-related violence.
“If we have to shut it down because the Democrats don’t want safety,” he added “Let’s shut it down.”
Members of Congress need to reach a deal by midnight on Thursday night to avert a government shutdown. But while combative, Mr Trump’s comments appear to have little to do with the ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill to keep the government open for another six weeks.
Many legislators seem to have little appetite for a repeat of January's three-day government shutdown, which was largely the result of an impasse on immigration. Democrats had demanded that Republican leaders agree to the rough outlines of a measure that would provide protections for dreamers, the term given to undocumented migrants brought to the US as children.
The issue had been brought to the forefront of congressional matters after Mr Trump announced in September that he was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, the Obama-era policy that had granted dreamers deportation reprieves. The shutdown only ended after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to take up a DACA bill.
“Even though a deal has eluded us for months, negotiators are now making significant progress,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. “The Republican leader and I have been working together quite productively. We are closer to an agreement than we have ever been.”
But the House and Senate are expected to diverge on their short-term budget bills that would fund the government slowing down the process. Both chambers of Congress must pass the same bill before it can head to the President's desk to be signed.
Mr Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell intend to award whopping spending increases to both domestic federal programmes and the Pentagon. The House bill is not expected to include the same increases, with many House conservatives opposed to such a move.
This means House Speaker Paul Ryan could have to turn to Democrats to round up the votes needed to avert a shutdown.
While immigration may not be the key issue in this week's budget talks, it's not going away anytime soon.
DACA expires on March 5, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has suggested that Mr Trump will not extend the deadlines. This means that Congress has less than a month to pass a permanent legislative solution to the programme.
The immigration proposal the President recently offered to Congress has drawn strong opposition from Democrats, whose support is expected to be necessary for the Senate to pass a bill. Republicans hold a slim 51-49 majority in the 100-member upper chamber, meaning an immigration bill would need the votes of nine Democrats – if Republicans play by the rules – to move forward.
Mr Trump has said he would grant about 1.8 million dreamers legal status, including a path to citizenship – in exchange for increased enforcement, the construction of his long-promised border wall, and a restructuring of legal immigration channels that moves away from reuniting families and gives priority to higher-skilled immigrants.
