Good Tuesday morning, I'm Jake Sherman, and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing

sponsored by Stop the Hid. And I'm Anna Palmer. We thought we were somewhere, but in fact, we are

nowhere. Yesterday afternoon, we started hearing that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

was going to file a so-called minibus spending bill, seven bills wrapped into one, with an increase in border

spending. He didn't, and Monday went by without appreciable progress in funding the government.

Time is dwindling, and Capitol Hill is waiting for President Donald Trump to say what he would like

to sign. At this point, it would be difficult to see Congress clear a seven-bill minibus

in four days. So either the government shuts down Friday or somehow both sides agree to a short-term

spending bill. The president is not going to get his five billion. No way, no how. So the question is,

what will he accept? And how much time will he give congress to do it the house isn't in session

until tomorrow night and at the moment trump isn't negotiating nor see stating how he'd like to see

this standoff resolved it's just complete absolute stillness there's an interesting dynamic that

sprouted up in recent days republicans have said absent a big spending deal, they'd be

fine with a short-term spending bill because it would interrupt the early days of Nancy Pelosi's

majority. Trump would be fighting Pelosi on immigration in January or February instead of his own

party. There's an idea bouncing around that the government could shut down from December 21st

all the way until January 3rd,

and then the new House Democratic majority would open up the session by passing a clean

stopgap and sending it to the Senate. But Senate folks tell us they wouldn't fall for that,

and their larger majority in 2019 would amend the bill and send it back to the House.

Burgess Everett, John Bresnahan, and Sarah Ferris have a piece up with Senate Minority Leader

Chuck Schumer saying that he hasn't heard from the White House since last Tuesday.

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