The White House’s public comment telephone line changed their phone message during the shutdown to blame the Democrats for not making a deal that would keep the government funded and running. Veuer's Maria Mercedes Galuppo (@mariamgaluppo) has more. Buzz60
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders dug in their heels on Sunday, each blaming the other side for the partial government shutdown now in its second day.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urged Democrats to lift their objections to a short-term spending bill to keep the government open. At 1 a.m. Monday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on a bill that would fund the government through Feb. 8, but it is not clear whether it has enough support to pass.
"This shutdown is only going to get a lot worse tomorrow. A lot worse," McConnell said from the Senate floor. "Today would be a good day to end it... This shutdown was a political miscalculation of gargantuan proportions, but it doesn’t need to go on any longer."
More: The government shutdown: What we know now
More: To end government shutdown, Trump suggests Senate use 'nuclear option'
Democrats saw it differently. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused the Republican-controlled White House and Congress of preventing a compromise.
"Under this unified control it was the Republicans' job to govern, it was their job to lead. It was their job to reach out to us and come up with a compromise. They have failed," Schumer fired back.
The Senate on Friday night blocked legislation that would keep the government funded for the next month. That bill would also have extended a children's health insurance program and delayed some health care taxes. The legislation came up with a vote of 50-49 – about 10 votes short of passing. Most Democrats and a handful Republicans voted against the bill.
Democrats opposed the bill because it did not include legal protections for DREAMers, the undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and were covered under an Obama-era order. They also were unhappy that it left out other domestic spending priorities.
In September, President Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program but gave Congress six months to find a solution. While there have been a variety of proposals introduced in both the House and Senate — a few of them bipartisan — no votes have been scheduled.
"There are people, even five Republicans, who voted against the cloture on the continuing resolution because they're sick as well of these continuing resolutions," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on NBC. "It has to come to an end, and it will, if and when the president shows the leadership that we expect of him as president."
So far, lawmakers seem to be sticking with their own parties only emerging to blame the other side. The government shut down is "solely done by the Senate Democrats … they shut down the government over a completely unrelated issue," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said on CBS.
Despite the back-and-forth, there appears to be little motion toward a deal.
McConnell and Schumer still had not spoken since the original short-term spending bill failed early Saturday morning, Schumer’s spokesman Matt House told USA TODAY Sunday afternoon.
White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said on NBC Sunday morning that the president had been engaging with GOP leadership but hadn’t talked to Schumer since the two met on Friday afternoon.
Schumer said on the Senate floor Sunday that, during the meeting with the president, he proposed authorizing funding for Trump’s wall along the border with Mexico in exchange for protections for DREAMers and a spending bill that included spending for other domestic priorities.
Schumer said that the offer was rejected.
"I essentially agreed to give the president something he said he wants in exchange for something we both want," Schumer said. "This is the Trump shutdown. Only President Trump can end it. We Democrats are at the table, ready to negotiate. The president needs to pull up a chair and end this shutdown."
The White House said they would not negotiate on immigration until the government re-opened.
As legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to pass, and Republicans have a narrow 51-49 majority, Trump on Sunday urged senators to change the chamber's rules to a simple majority – and work instead on a long term spending bill. Senators from both parties on Sunday appeared to have little appetite to take up this suggestion.
More: To end government shutdown, Trump suggests Senate use 'nuclear option'
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is the Republican whip, said on the Senate floor Sunday afternoon that there was bipartisan support for protections for DREAMers and the shutdown was hampering the chances of a compromise.
"It seems to me that our Democratic colleagues have ... shot themselves in the foot, reloaded and shot themselves in the other foot and now they expect President Trump to somehow rescue them out of this box canyon," Cornyn said. "They shut down the government and now they're hurting the very people that they shutdown the government to help. Because there's no negotiations going on on a solution that we'd all like to try to achieve."
While each side is banking the other party will get blamed, polls ahead of the shutdown found that Americans would assign fault to Trump and the GOP.
But there was one glimmer of hope Sunday afternoon, a bipartisan group of lawmakers huddled to try and hash-out a compromise.