Amid drama over funding for President Trump’s border wall, one-in-five U.S. voters say they are willing to privately fund the national security need, according to a new poll.
Rasmussen released a poll on Tuesday showing that 21 percent of voters “say they would contribute money to a private fund set up to build the wall if Congress refuses to fund it.”
The majority of voters (69%), however, say they would not put money towards a private fund for the wall. Ten percent (10%) poll undecided.
Along party lines, “One-in-three Republicans (34%) would contribute to a private fund to build the wall, compared to 10% of Democrats and 21% of voters not affiliated with either major political party.”
President Trump had requested from Congress $5 billion to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. During an on-camera exchange with Democratic congressional leaders last week, Trump threatened to allow the federal government to shut down if Democrats refused to fund the wall which he said was a must in the interest of U.S. national security.
The White House seemed to have abandoned the demand for $5 billion on Tuesday, as White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during a press briefing that "Trump does not want a shutdown and will identify ‘other ways’ to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border,” according to The Washington Post.
Regardless, Democrats are not being amiable to their Republican counterparts in the budget talks.
“Democrats rejected a Republican spending offer made shortly after Trump’s retreat on the wall, and Congress appeared headed toward the lowest-common-denominator solution: a short-term funding extension that would keep the government open for a period of weeks and then hand Democrats the responsibility of passing a more lasting fix once they retake the House majority in January,” The Washington Post reports.
If they do not reach a deal by Friday, parts of the government will shut down at midnight.
The Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely U.S. voters was conducted Dec. 12-13 and has a margin sampling error of 3 percentage points.