Trump rejects call for temporarily reopening govt

As the partial government shutdown entered the 24th day, US President Donald Trump on Monday rejected calls from one of his top Republican aides to temporarily reopen the government.

Asked about Senator Lindsey Graham's suggestion that he would sign a short-term spending bill to hold talks with the Democrats over the border wall, Trump remarked, "I do reject it."

"I'm not interested. I want to get it solved. I don't want to just delay it. I want to get it solved," he was quoted by The Hill as saying.

In an interview to Fox News, Graham on Sunday urged Trump to temporarily reopen the government in a bid to lure the Democrats to come to the negotiating table. He also suggested that the US President could use his emergency powers to bypass the Congress and build the wall.

"I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three weeks, before he pulls the plug. See if we can get a deal. If we can't at the end of three weeks, all bets are off - see if he can do it by himself with the emergency powers. That is my recommendation," he said.

However, Trump also rejected the suggestion of using emergency powers, saying that he is "not interested" in the taking the step for now.

Democrats have repeatedly said that it will pass a series of stopgap spending bills to reopen government agencies while funding the Department of Homeland Security through February 8 to buy more time for talks on the proposed wall, as per the report.

Already in the last week, the ongoing partial government shutdown broke the record of being the longest in the history of the country when it entered the 22nd day, breaking the previous record of 21 days.

There is still no hope in sight for the end of the current shutdown which has been learnt to have impacted a quarter of the federal government and a large number of federal workers. Approximately 800,000 federal workers have been adversely affected by the lapse in funding.

The shutdown was triggered on December 22 last year by a lack of consensus between lawmakers and the US President on the funding for the wall on the border with Mexico which was one of Trump's electoral promises.

So far, no agreement has been reached between Trump and congressional Democrats to put an end to the shutdown.

Trump has reiterated his demand for $5.7 billion to fund the wall, asserting that the "growing crisis" of illegal immigration is hurting millions of Americans.