{UAH} How Schumer and McConnell kept Trump out of the shutdown talks

While the president claims he's the dealmaker-in-chief, it was veteran lawmakers who got it done.

By BURGESS EVERETT and HEATHER CAYGLE

02/15/2019 10:11 AM EST

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The day before the 35-day government shutdown ended, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell huddled privately to figure out some way everyone could save face and end the biggest congressional crisis in years.

The Senate majority leader first floated providing a pro-rated piece of wall money for President Donald Trump, which Schumer rejected. Then the minority leader tried to isolate the troubled Department of Homeland Security spending bill and fund the rest of the government, which McConnell spurned.

Finally, they hit upon a solution.

"I said, 'Here's my proposal to you. Let's do a conference committee. They are good at it, they get along, they've done the other six budget bills, they can do this,'" Schumer recounted in his office Thursday as a months-long funding crisis was concluding. "And he accepted. And I think that paved the way to getting this done."

When Trump first announced he was giving Congress three weeks to reach a border security deal, few in Washington thought bipartisan negotiations would achieve anything.

But the story of how the conference committee and its leaders succeeded after so many brutal months fighting over Trump's wall is a simple one, according to more than a dozen lawmakers and aides: Trump largely stayed out of it. And seasoned veterans were allowed to do what they've done their entire congressional careers — figure out diplomatic ways to spend hundreds of billions of dollars.

He gave them the space to do what they wanted to do," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally. And nothing could get done until negotiators got "Pelosi and Trump and Schumer out of the room," added Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).

The negotiations broke down over the weekend, but senior lawmakers didn't really sweat until Trump was presented with the final product. In true Trump fashion, the president kept everyone waiting to know whether he'd cast the city into chaos once again. And then he stunned even members of his own party by deciding at the eleventh hour to pursue an explosive national emergency declaration to further fund his wall.

The week leading up to Friday's government funding deadline was characterized by a dramatic round of ups and downs.

On Monday, when Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) announced that a deal had been reached, most of Congress was ecstatic and relieved the impasse that led to the longest shutdown in history would finally be ending.

But with no bill text, Trump was perplexed.

As Shelby walked the president through the agreement on Tuesday, the president began venting about the legislation. Trump was not happy to learn the bill would leave him with about a quarter of the border barrier funding he'd insisted upon in the run-up to the shutdown.

The president's initial anger at what the conference committee produced brought Democratic delight. Over and over, the president had tried unsuccessfully to peel off moderate Democrats to break with Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and force the party to cave on wall funding.

"He's not a great negotiator. He's a bully. And that's what the real estate people will tell you in New York. He doesn't come up with clever compromises, he tries to bully them, sue them," Schumer said. "He knows he can't push me around."

Negotiators wouldn't iron out the final details and unveil the measure until late Wednesday night — further worrying the White House about what exactly was in the bill. Congressional sources described an intense 24 hours of conversations with the president. With no bill text, opponents of the deal began attacking it and concern grew that Trump wouldn't support it.

The president and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney began dialing McConnell and House Minority Leader McCarthy (R-Calif.), nervous about certain provisions. The president never threatened to veto the package, but was concerned that it would limit his ability to build the wall.

The GOP leaders pressed home their main points to the president repeatedly: Democrats agreed to $1.375 billion in new barrier funding that Trump could call a wall, and Republicans rejected a statutory cap for ICE detention beds that Democrats sought.

"Nancy Pelosi said not one dollar for the wall, said she would end all the detention beds, and they'd eliminate ICE," McCarthy argued in an interview. "The president came out well on this bill."

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