Each day this week, the House will vote on bills to fund shuttered parts of the government, bit by bit. The first is a spending bill to cover financial services, such as the Treasury Department and the IRS. Later this week, they'll vote on bills covering national parks, and housing and transportation, as well as agriculture -- which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more colloquially referred to as SNAP or food stamps.
The House already passed the same bills in a single appropriations package last week, and they were all passed by the Senate last year. But Democrats will use the strategy of passing the spending bills individually to keep a spotlight on the issue with the shutdown now in its third week and with no end in sight. In their view, sending the individual bills to the Senate will ramp up pressure on Republicans, even though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear he won't take up anything without the President's blessing.
Last week, only seven Republicans joined with Democrats to pass the appropriations package. While Republicans say they'll put up a largely united front again with few defections, Democrats predict they'll have more Republicans in their corner this week.
"We expect that that number will cross into double figures (Wednesday) and as the week proceeds," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the new chairman of the Democratic caucus.
Some GOP senators have already started expressing frustration with the stalled negotiations and appear eager to reopen the remaining parts of government, with continued talks over border security afterward.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was spotted on Wednesday huddling with fellow Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
"All of us are discussing plans and possible compromises in ending the shutdown," Collins told CNN. "That's a common goal that everyone you saw talking there shares."
The President and Vice President will continued making their case to Senate Republicans at a Capitol Hill lunch Wednesday, urging the conference to stand together in the President's push to get $5.7 billion for the border wall.
He'll later sit down with congressional leaders of both parties at the White House in yet another meeting after a sting of high profile gatherings that have resulted in little to no progress.
Hours before the White House meeting, both sides remained dug in. Members and leaders of both parties offered different interpretations of the President's prime-time address Tuesday night and continued to throw shots at each other over who's to blame for the shutdown.
"In no way did the President's speech last night make a persuasive or even a new case for an exorbitantly expensive border wall, a wall that the President guaranteed would be paid by Mexico," Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois said the President's speech was "completely inconsistent with reality," arguing it's something he would expect to hear at a rally, not in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, Rep. Steve Scalise, the Republican whip, argued Democrats who say the situation at the border is a "fabricated crisis" are operating in a "denial of reality."
"It's an insult to the families of all of those victims of crime (and) the opioid crisis, which is so real in almost every community in this country," he told reporters.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy argued Democrats aren't negotiating in good faith, saying they "don't even want to talk about the problem."
"This is the challenge we have: Democrats who say, 'I can't talk about anything until the government is open,'" he added.
Asked if there will be a point at which Democrats need to compromise on the border wall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued Democrats are already compromising by bringing to the floor spending bills that were passed by Senate Republicans.
It's the White House, she said, that keeps moving "the goalposts."
"Every time they come with a proposal, they walk away from it," she told reporters in a news conference on Capitol Hill with furloughed workers standing in the background. "Pretty soon these goalposts won't even be in the stadium."
For his part, Trump was unflinching Wednesday in his position, explaining why he won't agree to reopen parts of government without securing funding for a border wall first.
"Right now if I did something that was foolish like gave up on border security, the first ones that would hit me are my senators. They'd be angry at me," Trump told reporters, expressing publicly what he's told lawmakers and allies over the past several weeks.
He went on, saying "The second ones (to hit me) would be the House and the third ones would be, frankly, my base and a lot of Republicans out there and a lot of Democrats that want to see border security."
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