A blowup over immigration policy has prevented lawmakers from reaching a long-term deal to keep the government running.
With government funding set to expire at midnight on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress is ‘not yet ready’ to move ahead with a substantial deal, and called for passage of another short-term funding bill to kick talks to next month.
‘By now it is clear that we are not yet ready to move ahead with a major agreement for long-term funding for our armed forces, nor on our immigration policy,’ McConnell said on the Senate floor.
‘Compromise solutions are not out of reach but for now, Congress needs to keep the government running,’ the Kentucky Republican added.
Government funding runs out at midnight on Friday unless Republicans can pass a spending measure or a short-term funding bill
Members of the bipartisan ‘Gang of Six’ group of senators continue to look for a solution to renew DACA protections, fund border security and otherwise forge an immigration compromise, following an extraordinary blowup after President Trump reportedly blasted immigration from ‘s***hole countries.’
But a key Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, cast the effort as fruitless.
‘The ‘Gang of Six’ deal to fix DACA will not get a vote in the House or the Senate because POTUS will not sign it. Let’s go back to the drawing board and get this done: Border Security, end Diversity Visa Lottery, limit chain migration, and fix DACA,’ he wrote.
Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois says the group wants McConnell to allow a ‘test vote’ on the compromise bill.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus is split over whether to back the short-term bill, which also delays several healthcare related taxes.
House Republican leaders are gauging support for a short-term funding bill that reauthorizes a children’s health program. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) speaks during a news conference after a House Republican caucus meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 17, 2018
The White House dispatched chief of staff John Kelly to meet with Hispanic members of Congress on Wednesday to ease tensions over an immigration issue threatening to derail efforts on a funding bill to avert a partial government shutdown.
Republicans, who have majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate, are eyeing another short-term spending bill to keep the government open beyond Friday and also need to win support from fiscal conservatives in their own party.
Democrats want the spending bill to include protects for ‘Dreamers’ – mostly Hispanic young adults brought to the United States illegally when they were children. Kelly was to meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which opposed a bipartisan immigration deal floated last week because it would not provide a path to citizenship for parents of Dreamers.
If Congress approves a temporary ‘continuing resolution’ to keep the government funded through Feb. 16, it would be the fourth such measure since the 2018 federal fiscal year began on Oct. 1.
The House’s Republican funding measure does not include Democrats’ demands to shield Dreamers, Republican Representative Mike Simpson said on Tuesday. Democrats want a spending bill that protects Dreamers and it was unclear whether they would support another continuing resolution spending measure – especially if it does not contain an immigration provision.
Money for federal agencies expires on Friday and Republicans are trying to get a bill to President Donald Trump’s desk before then.
The spending plan being developed in the House would give Democrats an unrelated victory: a six-year reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), according to lawmakers. It was unclear whether the House Republicans would get enough votes to pass the measure in that chamber.
It was also unclear whether the conservative House Freedom Caucus would back the new plan. The caucus leader, Representative Mark Meadows, said late on Tuesday he did not know if a ‘compelling’ case had been made for another temporary spending bill that would fail to bring the big increases in defense spending his group is seeking.
The Republicans’ majority in the Senate is slim, meaning they need some Democratic support to pass a government funding measure.
Senate Republican leaders have warned against holding a funding bill hostage to the debate over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects Dreamers and gives them work permits. They say lawmakers have until March – when Trump ordered the program to expire – to find a compromise.
‘We’ve heard this before. We’ve seen this movie already,’ Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told CNN. ‘There needs to be a solution now.’
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the backers of the bipartisan deal floated last week, said it was naive for Republicans to believe they could get all the defense funding they want but deal with Dreamers later.
‘I do know how this movie ends and I want you to know how it ends: We’re not going to leave 800,000 people out in the cold with no place to go,’ Graham said at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday. (Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Katanga Johnson; Editing by Bill Trott)