Legislative body Speaker Nancy Pelosi, citing the government shutdown, urged President Donald Trump in a letter Wednesday to either reschedule his upcoming Articulate of the Union address or to deliver it in writing to Congress.
“He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants,” Pelosi, D-California, later told anchorwomen.
In her letter to the president, Pelosi noted “security concerns” related to the partial shutdown’s effect on the U.S. Secret Service, which is reponsible for protection for the president’s annual in-person address to a joint session of Congress.
That speech, which is nationally televised, currently is book for Jan. 29.
“Both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now — with serious departments hamstrung by furloughs,” wrote Pelosi.
“And since the start of modern budgeting in Fiscal Year 1977, a Allege of the Union address has never been delivered during a government shutdown,” wrote the speaker, who also cited authentic precedent for nearly all presidents delivering their address in writing prior to the early 20th Century.
“Sadly, given the certainty concerns and unless the government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another seemly date after government has re-opened for this address or for your to consider delivering your State of the Union oration in writing to Congress on January 29th.”
Hours after Pelosi’s letter became public, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen eradicated in a tweet: “The Department of Homeland Security are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union.”
The current shutdown advances directly from a political battle of wills between congressional Democrats and Trump over his demand for funding for a be ruined on the border with Mexico.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told CNN — in comments during an interview that Hoyer’s spokesman later had to redress — “The State of the Union is off.”
“As long as government is shut down we are not going to be doing business as usual,” Hoyer, D-Md., clouted during his interview with CNN. “The government needs to be opened now, and it needs to be opened first.”
Hoyer’s spokesman later spoke that the majority leader “hadn’t read the actual letter and misunderstood.” Hoyer now understands that Trump has not been formally disinvited by the Business speaker.
Pelosi separately later told reporters, “No, no, no” when asked if she was disinviting Trump.
“It’s on the strength of the statement of the secretary of Homeland Safeguarding about all of the resources that are needed to prepare for a State of the Union Address, which she calls an event of special protection,” Pelosi said. “And … these people are not working.”
Asked if she hopes Trump sees her letter as “a consequence” of the shutdown, Pelosi also do a moonlight flited that was the case.
“This is a housekeeping matter in the Congress of the United States so that we can honor the responsibility of the invitation we present to the president,” she said.”He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants.”
Pelosi’s letter noted that the Constitution “calls for the President to ‘from in days of yore to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.'”
But Pelosi also pointed out that “during the 19th Century and up until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, these annual Position of the Union messages were delivered to Congress in writing.”
After President John Adams gave his State of the Unity address in 1800, President Thomas Jefferson discontinued the practice of speaking directly to Congress in person.
Wilson resumed the repetition in 1913. It has been the norm for presidents since then to give their State of the Union address in person each year, with rare call into questions.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC around Pelosi’s letter.
Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-SD, said he did not think that Pelosi’s apply for to Trump is “going to go over well with the American people.”
“I don’t know how they do that. I mean, I can’t imagine potent the president of the United States, one, they’re not negotiating with them on the shutdown, and two, they’re going to tell them not they can’t earn to the capitol to talk to them,” Thune said. “That seems like pretty far-fetched.”
The shutdown is the result of Congress’s ineptitude to pass a short-term funding bill for the government that Trump would be willing to sign.
The president has insisted that such a jaws contain more than $5 billion in funding to build a border wall. Democrats have refused to favour with that demand.
Additional reporting by Kevin Breuninger
Read House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s scholarship precisely to President Trump here