Politics: DOWN TO THE WIRE: Trump, congressional leaders try for a deal on government shutdown

President Donald Trump requested Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer come to the White House on Friday to discuss the government-shutdown crisis.

• The government will enter a partial shutdown at midnight unless Congress passes a funding bill.
• President Donald Trump invited Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to the White House on Friday afternoon in hopes of reaching a deal to keep the government open.
• Schumer and Democrats are insisting that the funding bill include a codification of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program.

---

With hours to go before a government shutdown deadline, President Donald Trump and congressional leaders scrambled to work out a compromise to keep the government open.

Trump met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at the White House on Friday afternoon to try to hash out a deal on a funding package that would keep the government open beyond the midnight deadline.

Schumer and most Senate Democrats have refused to support a bill passed by the House on Thursday that would fund the government until February 16.

Democrats are insisting that any funding bill include a codification of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program. The DACA program shields from deportation nearly 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who entered the US as minors.

Following the meeting, Schumer told reporters that the time with the president was productive but there is no deal yet.

"We had a long and detailed meeting," Schumer said. "We discussed all of the major outstanding issues, we made some progress, but we still have a good number of disagreements. The discussions will continue."

A few hours later, Trump took to Twitter to extol the progress made with Schumer and Republican leaders.

"Excellent preliminary meeting in Oval with @SenSchumer - working on solutions for Security and our great Military together with @SenateMajLdr McConnell and @SpeakerRyan. Making progress - four week extension would be best!" the president said.

Trump originally kicked off the fight over DACA by ending the program in September. The president built in a six-month delay for the program's end to give Congress time to pass a bill to protect the more than 700,000 DACA recipients.

With the program set to expire at the beginning of March, Schumer and the Democrats are attempting use the shutdown as leverage to codify it in legislation.

Some members of the Democratic conference broke ranks during the run-up to the deadline, with Sens. Joe Donnelly and Joe Manchin saying they will vote for the GOP-led CR. Both senators are up for re-election in 2018 and are running in states Trump carried in the 2016 election.

Schumer did propose a funding bill that would last only a few days to give lawmakers time to hash out an agreement on the immigration program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of the GOP leadership rejected the idea, but some Republican senators were on board.

"We could easily pass a continuing resolution — which lasts days (certainly more than the four proposed by the Senate minority leader) and less than the 30 days passed by the House of Representatives — to close the deal on outstanding issues which remain," Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of three Republicans who rejected the House bill, said in a statement.

Sen. Lamar Alexander concurred with Graham that a short-term bill may be ideal.

"I’m glad to see Senator Schumer is meeting with President Trump," Alexander told Business Insider. "Grown-ups ought to be able to sit down and say we can begin 2018 with solutions on these major areas affecting the American people would be a great way to start the year. I think we could do it in a short period of time. Probably be longer than four days and not as long as 30 days."

President Donald Trump requested Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer come to the White House on Friday to discuss the government-shutdown crisis. Read Full Story