Pelosi and Schumer Meet With Trump Again
Autonomous congressional leaders said Tuesday they'd reached an agreement with President Donald Trump to motion forward with a "large and assuming" $2 trillion infrastructure deal, and will meet with him once again side by side month to discuss how to pay for information technology.
Speaking exterior the White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expressed optimism about their ability to work with the president, with whom they've had a shaky relationship in recent months.
The Democratic leaders said they and Trump had agreed that the packet'south price would be $2 trillion and would focus on roads, bridges, highways, h2o, the power grid and broadband internet expansion. They added that they had agreed with Trump to come across once more in three weeks to hash out how to pay for the package.
"We told the president we needed his ideas on funding," Schumer said.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders chosen the coming together "excellent and productive."
"The Us has not come even close to properly investing in infrastructure for many years, heedlessly prioritizing the interests of other countries over our own," Sanders said in a statement. "We have to invest in this country's future and bring our infrastructure to a level better than it has ever been before."
Sanders also said the president and Democratic leaders would meet in the almost future to hash out prescription drug prices.
Schumer and Pelosi were upbeat afterwards the coming together, praising the president'due south arroyo.
Pelosi called it "very productive" and said she was "very pleased" with Trump's "positive mental attitude."
"This was a very good start, and we promise it volition get to a constructive conclusion," Schumer said.
He added that "there was goodwill in this meeting — which is different than some of the other meetings nosotros have had, which is a practiced thing."
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Those remarks appear to refer to the pair's meetings with Trump last wintertime related to funding for his proposed border wall and the government shutdown.
The Democratic leaders added later in a articulation news release that the purpose of the meeting was to observe out how much Trump was willing to agree to spend on infrastructure, and they "were pleased he suggested $2 trillion."
Senate Bulk Leader Mitch McConnell said at a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday, all the same, that whatsoever effort by Democrats to modify parts of the 2017 taxation overhaul to help finance the infrastructure plan would be "a nonstarter."
"This tax bill is what's generated this robust economy," McConnell said. "The last thing we want to practise is step on all of this growth by stepping back and repealing, in event, what has generated all this prosperity and low unemployment."
Discussion 'all over the identify'
A senior Autonomous aide who attended Tuesday'south meeting told reporters afterward that neither side made a single mention of congressional investigations related to special counsel Robert Mueller'southward probe, Trump's tax returns, subpoenas or impeachment. There was also no discussion of how to pay for the infrastructure programme.
The meeting was a "very cordial, very positive chat," but the discussion "was all over the place," the aide said.
At one signal, Trump encouraged the ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Educational activity, Labor and Pensions Commission, Patty Murray of Washington, to restart work on a health care bargain with the Republican chairman, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, according to the aide.
Some other Democratic source that was in the White Firm meeting told NBC News that Trump brought upward trade and immigration at the starting time of the meeting, calling on Democrats to work with him on his proposals to address the situation at the border. Pelosi, the source said, brought upwardly Autonomous concerns related to prescription drug-related provisions of the merchandise pact amid the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Before Tuesday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney downplayed the ability of Trump and the Democratic leaders to reach a bargain on infrastructure, saying it was more likely that Congress would laissez passer the USMCA.
In an interview with Fox Business organisation Network'due south Maria Bartiromo at the Milken Institute'southward Global Briefing in Los Angeles, Mulvaney said: "Do I think at that place'south an interest in doing it? Yes. Practise I think there'southward probably more than interest, especially on the Democrats' part, to make a show for trying to get a bargain? Yeah. I hope the conversations get well today, but if they don't, it would non surprise me. I recall it's a much better chance of getting USMCA passed than there is in getting an infrastructure deal passed."
Previous sessions between Trump and the Democratic leadership have not been so genial. In December, Pelosi, Schumer and Trump bickered in an explosive public coming together over the president's promised wall and threat to shutter regime agencies if Congress didn't fund it.
During that tense gratis-for-all, the lawmakers snapped at each other and Pelosi fifty-fifty remarked that "this is spiraling downwardly."
Then, in Jan, Trump reportedly walked out of a airtight-door meeting with congressional leaders after Pelosi told him she wouldn't fund his wall even if he ended the shutdown.
Weeks earlier, at a news briefing afterward the midterm elections, Trump had said he "would like to see bipartisanship" and work with Democrats on infrastructure and other problems, simply he wouldn't be willing to do so if they began investigating him.
"If that happens, then we're going to exercise the same thing, and regime comes to a halt. And I would blame them," he said, adding that he'd have on a "warlike posture" if he was investigated.
On Tuesday, both Pelosi and Schumer indicated that doing both would be possible.
Asked whether their tiptop priority would be working with Trump to go things done or investigating the president, Pelosi responded that "our priority is to honour our responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States."
Schumer was more than straight.
"I believe we tin can do both at once," he said, telling reporters that Trump did not bring the topic up this time. "Nosotros tin can come upwards with some practiced ideas on infrastructure and ... the House and the Senate can proceed in its oversight responsibilities. The two are not mutually exclusive, and nosotros were glad he didn't brand information technology that way."
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/schumer-pelosi-strike-deal-trump-move-forward-infrastructure-n1000171
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