Hopes to keep offices open weaken
House votes to avert government shutdown; Senate prospects poor
Washington — A divided House on Thursday passed an eleventh-hour plan to keep the government running. But the GOP-written measure faced gloomy prospects in the Senate, and it remained unclear whether lawmakers would be able to find a way to keep federal offices open past a Friday night deadline.
The House voted by a near party-line 230-197 margin to approve the legislation, which would keep agency doors open and hundreds of thousands of federal employees at work through Feb. 16. The measure is designed to give White House and congressional bargainers more time to work through disputes on immigration and the budget that they’ve tangled over for months.
House passage was assured after the House Freedom Caucus reached an accord with Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. The leader of the hard-right group, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said Ryan promised future votes on extra defense spending and on a conservative, restrictive immigration bill, though a source familiar with the discussion said Ryan didn’t guarantee an immigration vote. That person was not authorized to speak publicly about the private negotiations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Just 11 Republicans, mostly conservatives and a pair of moderate Hispanic lawmakers, opposed the measure. Six Democrats, a mix of Hispanic and moderate legislators, backed the bill.
But most Senate Democrats and some Republicans were expected to vote no in that chamber, probably today. Democrats were hoping
to spur slow-moving talks on protecting young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally from deportation. A handful of Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., were pressing for swifter action on immigration and a longsought Pentagon spending boost.
Senate rejection would leave the pathway ahead uncertain with only one guarantee: finger-pointing by both parties, which began as that chamber debated the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., accused Democrats of a “fixation on illegal immigration,” which he said “has them threatening to filibuster spending for the whole government.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who’s tried using opposition to the bill as leverage to prod immigration negotiations, called for a plan to finance government for just a few days, and said party leaders should try to quickly reach an agreement. He said that should be done with or without President Donald Trump, who initially expressed support for a bipartisan effort to address the issue, only to oppose one proposed by several senators.
“How can you negotiate with the president, who has to sign the legislation, is like a sphinx on this issue, or says one thing The Associated Press that voting against the measure “plays right into Democrats hand” — presumably because it would dilute the argument that Democrats killed the legislation.
Democrats said voters would fault Republicans because they control Congress and the White House. They also noted that Trump rejected a proposed bipartisan deal among a handful of senators that would have resolved the conflict over how to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
“You have the leverage. Get this done,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said about Republicans.
Trump himself weighed in from Pennsylvania, where he flew to help a GOP candidate in a special congressional election.
“I really believe the Democrats want a shutdown to get off the subject of the tax cuts because they’re doing so well,” he said.
Shadowing everything is this November’s elections. Trump’s historically poor popularity and a string of Democratic special election victories have fueled that party’s hopes of capturing control of the House and perhaps the Senate.
As he’s done since taking office a year ago, Trump was dominating and confusing the jousting, at times to the detriment of his own party. He tweeted that the monthlong funding measure should not contain money for a children’s health insurance program — funds his administration has expressly supported — then the White House quickly said he indeed supports the legislation.
Congress must act by midnight tonight or the government will begin immediately locking its doors. Though the impact would initially be spotty — since most agencies would be closed until Monday — the story would be certain to dominate weekend news coverage, and each party would be gambling the public would blame the other.