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POTUS Campaign Promise Concerns Durbin

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin says he's concerned that President Donald Trump may follow through with his threat to force a government shutdown if Congress fails to approve money for a proposed wall on the United States' southern border.

The Illinois Democrat expects a showdown soon because Congress must take action by September 30 to approve a federal budget and raise the debt ceiling.

Durbin, who is the Senate minority whip,  adds that Congress may not be able to stop Trump is he follows through with his threat.

"If this president wants to shut down the government, He has the power to do it. He can veto a couple of bills and we'll see a government shutdown. But then, he's got to bear the responsibility. This is like a souvenir shop. Remember what the sign says? If you break it, you own it."

Some top Republicans also are pushing back against the president. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that he thought a shutdown was unnecessary.

Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.