How Did House of Representatives Vote on Shutdown
The House Voted to Avert a Shutdown—but It Might Not Be Enough
Republicans cobbled together the votes for a funding bill ahead of a Friday-night deadline, but information technology may be doomed in the Senate.
Updated on Jan 18 at x:02 p.m. ET
The House on Thursday evening narrowly passed a bill that would keep the federal authorities open up for nearly another month amid an impasse over immigration. But the proposal may be doomed in the Senate, where Democrats and a pocket-sized contingent of Republicans could block the pecker and send the regime into a shutdown commencement at midnight Fri.
Later an broken-hearted day of arm-twisting and negotiations, Republican leaders were able to persuade enough of their members to go along with a stopgap neb many in the party plainly despised. Rather than fund the government for the rest of the fiscal yr, information technology merely kicks the budget contend forward another month. In a largely futile bid for Autonomous back up, the bill reauthorizes the Children's Health Insurance Program for 6 years. Only it lacks several other Democratic priorities, most notably a permanent legal status for young immigrants who face the threat of deportation once President Trump ends the Deferred Activity for Childhood Arrivals programme in early March. A group of Democrats voted for the measure, known as a continuing resolution, only afterward it was clear that Republicans were going to exist able to pass it on their own. The bill passed, 230 to 197, with 11 Republicans voting against it and six Democrats voting for it.
The bigger drama for much of the solar day was whether a drove of defense hawks, along with conservatives in the Firm Freedom Caucus, would band together to sink the nib on the Republican side. Complicating the leadership'south effort was Trump himself, who tweeted in the forenoon his opposition to including a long-term extension of CHIP in a brusk-term spending bill. The White House was later forced to clarify that the president supported passage of the bill to avert a shutdown.
Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the Freedom Caucus chairman, told reporters that Speaker Paul Ryan and his squad lacked the votes to pass the bill and that his group was demanding concessions from the leadership. But GOP leaders said otherwise. "We'll have the Republican votes to laissez passer it," Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina told reporters midway through the afternoon. He said the political party whip, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, had been calling GOP lawmakers from the hospital, where he is recovering from another surgery later on being shot and seriously wounded at a congressional baseball game practice terminal year. When a member gets a call from a hospital bed, McHenry said, "it kinda works."
Yet all of the whipping by the House leadership had little consequence on the Senate. During a tense floor debate late Thursday evening, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer pushed for an firsthand vote on the Business firm bill. "We all know it will exist defeated," he said. Democrats said they had secured plenty support among their 49 members to cake the pecker from receiving the necessary 60 votes to defeat a filibuster. Merely Senate Bulk Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold the key vote until Friday, apparently hoping that a night's slumber and the impending deadline would cause plenty Democrats—and a few of his own resisting members—to relent.
Under pressure level from liberals and immigrant activists, Democratic senators said they were prepared to take a stand against Trump'south opposition to a bipartisan deal to extend DACA and provide a path to citizenship for the Dreamers, who were brought to the U.s.a. illegally equally children. "We will support a brusque-term CR for a few days to continue the government open while we stay in boondocks and conclude our negotiations. But we do non support perpetuating the electric current budgetary dysfunction that is pain our land and our Commonwealth," Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said in a joint statement.
Democrats used Trump's words to defend their position, pointing to his tweet final May saying the country needed "a good 'shutdown'" and his more recent comments suggesting a shutdown was all only inevitable. Republicans, meanwhile, said the Democratic position was "unconscionable" and held paychecks for military-service members hostage to an clearing deal. "There's no alibi for them to vote to shut the government down," Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee told reporters. "So I think the American people will see that and exist disgusted with all of Washington, and particularly those who voted to shut it down."
Notwithstanding, the GOP was undermined by its own disunity. Senators Lindsey Graham of Due south Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky vowed to vote along with Democrats against the House bill, every bit did Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. "We are in a position right now where we are simply kicking the can downward the route and the defence of our country is at adventure," Rounds said. "In its current form, I can't support the [standing resolution] but I'k open for discussions about how we tin can repair it."
Rounds and other senators raised the possibility of voting for an even shorter stopgap bill that would avert a shutdown and requite political party leaders at least a few more days to negotiate a broader bargain on immigration and spending. But it's unclear whether top Republicans would go for that.
In an ominous sign for the negotiations, talk increasingly turned on Thursday from ways to prevent a shutdown to which political party would be to arraign if one occurred. "If the government shuts downwards, they'll believe that nosotros're all idiots," GOP Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters, fifty-fifty every bit he personally said it would exist the mistake of Democrats pushing for "immunity" for undocumented immigrants.
Other Republicans were more resigned to history. Polls showed the public blamed the GOP for the shutdowns in 1995 and 2013. This time, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah suggested, would exist no different. "We e'er get blamed for it fifty-fifty when information technology's their fault," he lamented.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/congress-trump-house-vote-shutdown/550871/
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