White House Asking Every Agency for Money to Build Wall
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We just saw White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders brief the White House press corps. A couple of questions came up with regard to this potential government shutdown. Congress has four days. And so as it pertains to the border wall, you know, President Trump is asking for $5 billion. Democrats were essentially saying not so fast. And so as we just learned from Sarah Sanders, apparently, the President has been making phone calls and asking every single agency to see if they have money that could be used to fund his border wall. So let's go straight to our Senior Congressional Correspondent, Manu Raju. He's up on Capitol Hill. Manu, what do you know about this?</s>MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what the White House came to Congress with, earlier today, was a proposal to approve $1.6 billion in funding for border security that had already been agreed to by Republicans and Democrats on the Senate side and an additional $1 billion of what is being described as unspent money. And that would -- that appears to come from various accounts from various agencies, and perhaps that's what the White House is also referring to, is where the President himself could find money through his agency heads. The problem is that Democrats say that is just not going to fly. Already, Democrats pushing back. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, calling it a slush fund, saying they would not agree to going anything beyond that. Now, Brooke, I just talked to a number of Republican and Democratic senators who attended separate party lunches just now. And it's pretty clear that there is actually no clear path at the moment to avoid a shutdown on any sort of deal to give the President what he wants on his border wall money. But the one thing that I'm hearing from members on both sides is perhaps the only way to avoid a shutdown is a short-term deal to keep the government afloat until probably January or so, mid-January perhaps. A date is still being negotiated. And that is one way to avoid a shutdown so Congress can end its session before Christmas and then punt this fight into the new Congress when Democrats will regain control of the House. The Republicans will still have the Senate, and they'll have to get a deal then, so that is not decided ultimately. It's still not certain if the President himself would sign such a short-term deal. But at the moment, unclear how they get out of this shutdown fight. But it appears on both sides, they believe the only way do that is a short-term deal. That is, if the President gives his blessing, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: That's the if, so far. Manu, thank you, on Capitol Hill. Coming up next, the President is also stepping back from one of his other favorite ideas, arming teachers. What we're learning about his school safety plan, next.