President Donald Trump tamped down expectations that he is close to declaring a national emergency to get the money he desires to build his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall as a three-week impasse closing parts of the government continued on Friday.
Meanwhile, some 800,000 federal employees, more than half still on the job, missed their first paycheck under a stoppage that tied a record for the longest government shutdown in the nation's history, matching a mark set in the Clinton administration.
Lawmakers tried to reassure federal employees that Congress was aware of the financial hardship they are enduring. By a vote of 411-7, the House passed a bill requiring that all government workers receive retroactive pay after the partial shutdown ends. The Senate approved the bill unanimously Thursday. The president said Friday he would sign the legislation.
Trump visited McAllen, Texas, and the Rio Grande on Thursday to highlight what he calls a crisis of drugs and crime along the border. He suggested that if he cannot reach an agreement with House Democrats on funding the border wall, he would declare a national emergency.
But speaking to state and local leaders Friday, Trump said he wasn't ready to do that just yet. He said this is "something Congress can do," even though there's no indication they would.
The "easy solution is for me to call a national emergency ... but I'm not going to do it so fast," Trump said.
Bypassing Congress' constitutional control of the nation's purse strings would lead to certain legal challenges and bipartisan charges of executive overreach. Trump said his lawyers had told him the action would withstand legal scrutiny "100 percent."
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Negotiations are at a virtual standstill after talks collapsed multiple times over the past three weeks. Lawmakers have largely left town for the weekend, but the president on Friday called on Democrats in Congress to "come back and vote."
"We're going to ask the Democrats to come back to Washington and to vote for money for the wall, the barrier, whatever you want to call it is OK with me," Trump said. "They can name it whatever. They can name it 'peaches.' Whatever. I don't care what they name it. But we need money for that barrier."
The wall was the central promise of Trump's winning campaign in 2016. Supporters have tried to convince him that an emergency declaration is the best option to end the shutdown and would give him political cover to reopen the government without appearing to be caving on his pledge.
But not everyone in the administration is on board.
Senior aide Jared Kushner, who traveled with the president to Texas, is among those urging caution on the declaration, according to a person familiar with Kushner's thinking but not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.
Trump is growing more frustrated as the shutdown drags on and is complaining that his aides are not offering him an exit strategy. And with the closure's growing impact on the economy, national parks and food inspections, some Republicans are becoming uncomfortable with Trump's demands.
In the meantime, the administration has taken steps to lay the groundwork should Trump issue the declaration.
The White House has directed the Army Corps of Engineers to comb through its budget in search of money for the wall, including looking at $13.9 billion in unspent disaster relief funds earmarked for areas including hurricane-damaged Puerto Rico, Texas and more than a dozen other states. That's according to a congressional aide and administration official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the request.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a lawmaker with a close relationship with the president, discounted that option, saying it was not "under very serious consideration."
"If there's a list of top 10 priorities on where to get money from, that doesn't make the top 10 list," Meadows said.
Defense Department officials had already been poring over data on more than $10 billion in military construction projects to determine how much of it would be available for emergency spending this year.
On Friday, officials in Puerto Rico said diverting disaster money to the wall was "unacceptable" and that the island was struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria, the Category 4 storm that hit more than a year ago and caused more than $100 billion in damage
Gov. Ricardo Rossello said the wall should not be funded "on the pain and suffering" of U.S. citizens who have faced tragedy after a natural disaster.
It was not clear what a potential compromise between the White House and Congress might entail. Efforts at negotiating a broader immigration deal involving immigrants brought to the country illegally as children collapsed with little progress.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said at one point that he didn't "see a path in Congress" to end the shutdown, then stated later that enough was enough: "It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/barrier."
During his Thursday trip, Trump insisted he was "winning" the shutdown fight and criticized Democrats for asserting he was manufacturing a sense of crisis in order to declare an emergency.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., accused the president of engaging in political games to fire up his most loyal supporters and suggested that a heated meeting Wednesday with legislators at the White House had been "a setup" so that Trump could walk out of it.
The partial shutdown would set a record early Saturday, stretching beyond the 21-day closure that ended Jan 6, 1996, during President Bill Clinton's administration.
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Colleen Long, Alan Fram, Deb Riechmann, Zeke Miller, Nomaan Merchant and Danica Coto contributed to this report.
