U.S. Congress passes budget deal with no provisions for Dreamers

WASHINGTON— They can all claim wins in the big budget agreement: U.S. President Donald Trump, congressional Republicans and Democrats, too. Next up, however, is a Senate immigration battle that may well lead nowhere, complicated by divisions within parties rubbed raw by the spending pact plus electionyear pressures that always make compromise challenging.

In Washington’s latest embarrassing display of governance by brinkmanship, a bipartisan accord bolstering military and domestic programs by $400 billion (U.S.) and deepening federal deficits became law Friday — but not before the government technically shut down.

In what amounts to an achievement these days, lawmakers limited the overnight closure to less than nine hours — the time between when agencies technically ran out of money at midnight and Trump’s morning signing of the bill. It was the government’s second shutdown in three weeks, following January’s three-day closure when Senate Democrats demanding legislation shielding young “Dreamer” immigrants from deportation blocked a bill keeping agencies open.

The budget measure provides Pen- tagon spending increases sought by Trump and the GOP, more money for domestic agencies demanded by Democrats and $89 billion that both wanted for disaster relief.

The two-year pact, which also continues the government’s authority to borrow money, postpones any possible federal default or likely shutdowns until after the November elections.

But the 652-page budget bill says nothing about protecting the Dreamer immigrants, and that largely explains why a quarter of Senate Democrats and a third of House Democrats voted no. Passage left Democrats with little leverage to force congressional action on preventing deportation of hundreds of thousands of the young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and remain there without permanent legal protection.