White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Friday praised President Donald Trump's leadership skills in meeting with top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer at the White House to try to avoid a federal government shutdown.
"We certainly hope they can get it together," Conway told reporters after they met for about an hour. "Our military workers and government workers deserve it, and spouses and those CHIP recipients."
Trump and Schumer, the Senate minority leader, met with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and the Democrat's top staffer in the Oval Office.
The president, a native New Yorker who has contributed to Schumer's political campaigns over the years, called the Democrat in an eleventh-hour effort to avert a government shutdown.
Republicans and Democrat are bitterly divided over whether any plan to keep the government open includes legislation to extend the Children's Health Insurance Program and to protect about 700,000 immigrants affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The House approved a 30-day continuing resolution late Thursday that would keep the government running through Feb. 16 — and Republicans blamed Senate Democrats Friday for the stalemate in the upper chamber.
Without a funding plan, the government shuts down Friday at midnight. A 16-day partial closure in October 2013 cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion.
Conway did not provide any specifics of the Trump-Schumer meeting, but told reporters: "That's what leadership looks like, the president inviting both parties again and again to the White House to discuss matters."
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