White House: No Amnesty Deals for Illegals When Government of Lawful Americans is Shut Down

White House officials insisted there will be no negotiations on including DACA amnesty into the government funding resolution despite Senate Democrats’ shutdown of the government on Saturday.

“We will not negotiate over the status of people here unlawfully while Democrats shut down the government of the millions who are here lawfully,” a White House aide told Breitbart News on Saturday. 

White House director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short and White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney confirmed the sentiment in a briefing with reporters at the White House.

Short said that while they were open to further discussions on a DACA deal, they did not want a deal attached to the continuing resolution to fund the government.

“[W]e’re not going to be held hostage and let our troops be held hostage over this,” he said. “When they reopen the government, we will continue the discussions.”

Short said that Trump’s success in his first year as president was partially what prompted Democrats to shut down the government, accusing them of trying to impress leftist activists.

“They look at the accomplishments of the last year and all this administration has accomplished, and their reaction is, ‘Because we can’t beat them, what we’re going to do is we’re going to shut down the government,'” he said.

Mulvaney explained that the Trump administration would try to diminish the pain of a shutdown, unlike the Obama administration during the 2013 government shutdown.

He said that employees in the EPA, cybersecurity agencies, and the national parks would continue to work as well as employees involved with mine safety inspections and trade negotiations.

Both officials appeared baffled by the Democrats’ decision to shut down the government, asserting that there was nothing in the current funding resolution that Democrats actually opposed.

They confirmed that the president’s trip to Florida was canceled and that his scheduled trip to Davos, Switzerland, was being considered on a “day-by-day basis.”

Mulvaney compared Senate Democrats to toddlers having a temper tantrum.

“It is like a two-year-old temper tantrum to say, ‘I will take my toys and go home because I am upset about something else,’” he said. “It has nothing to do with this bill, and the Democrats are conducting a two-year-old temper tantrum in front of the American people.”