Congress has until Friday to keep the government open.
A government shutdown is looking more and more likely. Unless Congress acts, the government will close down Friday at midnight. There are a lot of moving pieces, but right now, neither the Senate nor the House appear to have the votes for a short-term funding bill — also known as a continuing resolution — to keep the government open.
Here’s what we know so far.
House Republican leadership would like to pass a short-term spending bill on Thursday night to keep the government open. But it’s unclear if they even have the votes from their party to do so.
The House Freedom Caucus, a group of right-wing conservatives, is threatening to vote against the short-term spending bill. Why? Conservatives want defense spending to be fully funded for one year — something Democrats almost certainly will not agree to because they would get nothing on their own spending priorities or an immigration deal.
The Freedom Caucus also wants a vote on a conservative immigration bill, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), in the House. Goodlatte’s bill is an immigration hawk wish list, which goes far past the framework the Trump White House laid out for a deal, and Democrats consider it a non-starter.
In 2013, the government shutdown was eventually ended by Democrats and moderate Republicans agreeing on a compromise. With House Democrats withholding their votes on any CR that doesn’t have a DACA fix, House Republican leadership needs to keep their rank-and-file united to keep the government open.
It’s either that, or make peace with Democrats by agreeing to pass a bipartisan immigration bill. Democrats are opposing a CR that does not include a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program; many voted against past short-term spending bills on December 8 and December 22 that didn’t contain DACA fixes, and they’re likely to do so again.
Bottom line: On a party-line vote, Republicans can only afford to lose roughly 21 votes. But as Vox’s Tara Golshan reports:
House Republicans are spending a lot of time debating a short-term spending bill that will likely be dead on arrival in the Senate.
A spending bill needs 60 votes in order to pass the Senate, which means Republicans need Democratic votes to keep the government open. With Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) still out of the Senate for health reasons and an Alabama Senate seat recently flipping from red to blue, Republicans need nine Democratic votes to pass the spending bill (or CR).
Each time a short-term spending bill has come up, more Democrats have voted against it. For instance, just eight Democratic senators voted against a CR on December 7. That number increased the next time it came up for vote on December 22, when a total of 29 Democratic senators, plus Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), voted against it.
In late December, 17 Democratic senators voted to pass the spending bill. By Thursday afternoon, nine of those had flipped their votes to no. They are:
Two more, Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Angus King (I-ME), have told reporters they are leaning toward a no vote. One Democrat that’s sure to vote for a CR is West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. That leaves eight Democrats that haven’t said how they’ll vote yet. They are:
It’s worth pointing out that it’s not just Democrats saying they’ll vote no. So far, three Republicans, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Rounds (R-SD), have said they won’t vote on a CR. Another, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), has a long history of not voting for CRs, and is likely to do so again.
NBC News reported Thursday afternoon Democrats had enough votes to block the spending bill.
That means that not only can Republican leadership not count on Democratic votes to keep the government open, they can’t even count on the votes from their own rank-and-file members at this point.
There are many different reasons. The biggest is the lack of a deal on DACA. Back in the fall, President Donald Trump announced he would end the program and punt it to Congress to fix. Trump also set a March deadline to fix DACA before recipients would lose their protected status — but though he has waffled, he has made statements supportive of a DACA fix, leaving many to wonder what, exactly the holdup is.
A group of senators including Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), have been working on a bipartisan DACA deal and trying to get votes for it in Congress. Even as their proposal gains steam in the Senate, conservative House Republicans don’t like the deal.
Now that House Republicans proposing yet another short-term spending bill with no immigration solution attached, Democrats and Republicans alike in the Senate are getting fed up.
There’s a whole host of other issues beyond immigration. Many Democratic senators are also frustrated with a lack of action on other issues, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program (also known as CHIP) and funding for community health centers. Others are just frustrated that there is no long-term spending deal after months of negotiations.
That frustration was apparent with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), one of the moderate Democrats who hasn’t yet said how she’ll vote.
“I do not think this is a way to legislate,” she told Vox . “Why is that we’re told, ‘Just give us this extra time and we’ll get the job done by the middle of next month,’ and it doesn’t happen? There’s a level of embarrassment about the ability of the United States Congress to do its job. We’re signaling defeat once again with the CR.”
