'We're talking': McConnell and Schumer attempt to defuse shutdown

There’s growing hope that the longtime Senate operators can end the stalemate fueled by Trump’s border wall demands.

By BURGESS EVERETT 01/25/2019 05:01 AM EST Updated 01/25/2019 07:03 AM EST

Chuck Schumer emerged from Mitch McConnell’s office after a 30-minute meeting on Thursday afternoon bearing a wide grin.

“We’re talking,” the Senate minority leader said as he walked back to his office.

After five weeks of mostly radio silence, with Washington reeling from the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the two party leaders are finally in a room together. And it might be just what's needed to, eventually, end an impasse sparked by President Donald Trump's long-running quest for his border wall.

Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) and Schumer (D-N.Y.) have talked often as they’ve run the Senate for the past two years, but the shutdown has brought a chill to their relationship. After Trump announced his plan to fund the wall and reopen the government on Saturday, it wasn’t until Tuesday that the two leaders spoke in depth about how the Senate would handle it, according to multiple sources.

But after they did, the Senate finally came alive. McConnell and Schumer set up two votes, one on Trump’s proposal, the other on a Democrat-backed spending bill, that both failed Thursday. The pair of doomed votes, however, is already spurring movement — demonstrating that neither the president nor the Democrats are likely to get everything what they want in the end and leading to the meeting in McConnell’s office.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/25/government-shutdown-mcconnell-schumer-talks-1125401