Trump holds ALL the cards. Shut down the Government - wait 30 days - let the firing begin. - Border wall, impeachment battle imperil budget progress. - Dems will lose!! The Senate passed a long-overdue, $209 billion bundle of bipartisan spending bills Thursday, but a bitter fight over funding demanded by President Donald Trump for border fencing imperils broader Capitol Hill efforts to advance $1.4 trillion worth of annual Cabinet agency budgets. The 84-9 vote sends the measure into House-Senate negotiations but doesn't much change the big picture. There has been little progress, if any, on the tricky trade-offs needed to balance Democratic demands for social programs with President Donald Trump's ballooning border wall demands. To amplify the point, Democrats shortly thereafter filibustered a much larger measure anchored by the $695 billion Pentagon funding bill, protesting Trump's plans to again transfer billions of dollars from the Pentagon to the border wall project. The mostly party-line vote triggered a familiar round of finger-pointing. "This delay is because they insist on including in this bill authority for President Trump to raid American tax dollars from our military — money that is intended for specific military priorities — to pay for his wall, which he promised that Mexico would pay for," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "And that is unacceptable." Passage of the annual appropriations bills is one of the few areas in which divided government in Washington has been able to deliver results in the Trump era, despite last winter's 35-day partial government shutdown. Trump has only reluctantly signed the measures, however, and the White House has been unyielding so far on its wall demands during this spending round. https://news.yahoo.com/border-wall-impeachment-battle-imperil-041007406.html