President Trump hit on no shortage of topics on Twitter Monday, but one of his more memorable tweets concerned the government shutdown. "I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security," the president wrote. The reference, of course, is to Trump's demand for more than $5 billion to build a border wall, an amount Democrats say they will never provide. Trump remained in DC while his family left for his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, notes the Hill. No big breakthroughs were expected to emerge anytime soon on the budget standoff, with the partial government shutdown now in its third day.
For one thing, both the House and Senate were not set to reconvene until Thursday. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said a counteroffer was presented to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer over the weekend, reports the AP. Mulvaney provided few details, saying only that the amount was between Trump's $5.7 billion request and the $1.3 billion Democratic offer. Meanwhile, the two sides traded slams. "It's Christmas Eve and President Trump is plunging the country into chaos," said a joint statement from Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Trump, for his part, tweeted that "at some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!" (The market selloff worsened Monday after Trump criticized the Fed again.)
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