WH Budget Director Tells CBN's Faith Nation: Chances 'Fairly High' Government Won't Shutdown Again

WASHINGTON – The chances are "fairly high" that there will be a spending bill to fund the government before the new shutdown deadline of Feb. 8, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney tells CBN's Faith Nation.

"I think my Democrat friends learned a bitter lesson over the weekend that a government shutdown doesn't help them politically and that taking hostages over DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program) is not going to help them further other discussions," Mulvaney told show hosts Jenna Browder and David Brody.

"So I think the chances of passing a spending bill are fairly good," he predicted.

As for a bipartisan immigration deal by that time, that's a different story.

"It is entirely possible that you do get a funding bill to fund the government for the rest of the year but not get an immigration bill," Mulvaney said. "We are confident that at the end of this process there will be a comprehensive immigration solution. Whether it happens by February 8 is another story."

The White House sees comprehensive immigration reform containing four components:

• Money to build a physical wall
• Changes to the chain migration system
• Moving the visa lottery system to a more merit-based system
• Beefing up interior enforcement

But Mulvaney tells CBN's Faith Nation  that wall funding is a must. "It is a very complicated problem and we will be engaging in the details of how to solve that problem, but a wall is clearly an important part of the plan to secure the southern border," he said.

As for the DACA issue, the White House it is ready to negotiate to keep DACA kids here in the United States, but it can't be a stand-alone issue.

"We all want to solve it here at the White House," Mulvaney said. "We just think it has to be done as part of an overall immigration solution. If you solve DACA now but you don't solve border security then you're simply recreating the problem five or ten or 15 years down the road – and we don't want to do that. That's not fair to anybody."