government shutdown Senate sets up votes on dueling plans

Both proposals are expected to fall short of 60 votes needed to pass

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Senate leaders on Tuesday agreed to vote on dueling proposals to reopen shuttered federal agencies this week, forcing a political reckoning for senators grappling with the longest shutdown in U.S. history: Side with President Donald Trump or vote to temporarily end the shutdown and keep negotiating.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. set up the two showdown votes for Thursday, a day before some 800,000 federal workers are due to miss a second paycheck.

One vote will be on his own measure, which reflects Trump’s offer to trade border wall funding for temporary protections for some immigrants. It was quickly rejected by Democrats.

The second vote is set for a bill approved by the Democratic-controlled House reopening government through Feb. 8, with no wall money, to give bargainers time to talk.

Both measures are expected fall short of the 60 votes need to pass, leaving little hope they represent the clear path out of the mess.

But the plan represents the first test of Senate Republicans’ resolve behind Trump’s insistence that agencies remain closed until Congress approves $5.7 billion to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

For Democrats, the votes will show whether there are any cracks in the so-far unified rejection of Trump’s demand.

Democrats on Tuesday ridiculed McConnell’s bill, which included temporarily extended protections for “Dreamer” immigrants, but also harsh new curbs on Central Americans seeking safe haven in the U.S.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the GOP plan’s immigration proposals were “even more radical” than their past positions. “The president’s proposal is just wrapping paper on the same partisan package and hostage-taking tactics,” offering to temporarily restore programs Trump himself tried to end in exchange for wall funding, Schumer said.

McConnell accused Democrats of preferring “political combat with the president” to resolving the 32-day partial federal shutdown. He said Democrats were prepared to abandon federal workers, migrants and all Americans “just to extend this run of political theater so they can look like champions of the so-called resistance” against Trump.

The confrontational tone underscored that there remained no clear end in sight to the closure. Amid cascading tales of civil servants facing increasingly dire financial tribulations from the longest federal shutdown in history, the Senate chaplain nudged his flock.

“As hundreds of thousands of federal workers brace for another painful payday, remind our lawmakers they can ease the pain,” Chaplain Barry Black intoned as the Senate convened.

The upcoming vote on the Democratic plan marked a departure for McConnell, who had vowed to allow no votes on shutdown measures unless Trump would sign them.

The White House views its latest offer as a test of whether Democratic leaders can hold their members together in opposition, said a person familiar with White House thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly. The administration also wants to show they are willing to negotiate, hoping it will push more blame onto Democrats, who are opposing negotiations until the government reopens. Public polls show Trump is taking the brunt of the blame from voters so far.

“How long are they going to continue to be obstructionists and not solve the problem and not reopen the government?” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Democrats.

One freshman, Democrat Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, a state that’s home to many federal workers, was circulating a draft letter Tuesday urging Pelosi to propose a deal that would reopen the government and then consider border security legislation – including holding votes on Trump’s demand for wall money – by the end of February.