Senate Republican leaders aren’t ruling out expanding the border security talks to include other issues, including language that raises the debt ceiling and helps the “Dreamers.”
“I’m for whatever works,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday.
McConnell and GOP lawmakers are eager to avoid restarting a partial government shutdown that ended after 35 days on Friday. They have less than three weeks to negotiate a border security deal that can win President Trump’s approval and avoid putting Trump in a position in which he feels pressure to declare a national emergency to build a southern border wall.
“I’m for narrow, or broader, or whatever works to prevent the level of dysfunction we’ve seen on full display for the last month and also doesn’t bring about the view on the president’s part that he needs to declare a national emergency,” McConnell said.
Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., said he believes negotiators will aim for a narrow deal with certain trade-offs for border security and Dreamers, who came here illegally as children. But he noted that the debt ceiling deadline is looming in the weeks ahead and an increase in the borrowing limit could end up in the border security deal.
“We all know that those are issues that are coming down the road that we have to deal with at some point,” Thune said. “There are some who think sooner is better than later.”
Under current law, the federal government can borrow as much as it needs until March 1, when the debt ceiling takes effect again. At that point, the debt limit will be whatever level of borrowing the government has incurred, and the government will be at the limit.
[Read more: Senior House Democrat presses Trump administration on debt ceiling plans]
To get around that limit, Congress will either have to raise the debt ceiling or suspend the debt ceiling altogether. The latter option seems most likely, as Congress has been voting to suspend the debt ceiling the last several times the ceiling was reached.
Some lawmakers are pushing for a debt ceiling increase or suspension now, as House and Senate negotiators work out a border security deal that will also provide fiscal 2019 funding for about 25 percent of the federal government.
“The more narrow discussion is most likely, and that would deal with the issue of border security,” Thune said. “But we’ll see where the parties want to go.”
Negotiators will hold the first meeting on Wednesday and must strike a deal by Feb. 15, when a temporary government funding measure expires.
Another option is to include language to help the Dreamers, younger migrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Trump floated that option with Democrats as a way to end the shutdown, but Democrats rejected it.
But lawmakers have made various predictions about what will be included or excluded from the border security deal.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., for instance, said Tuesday the House would soon take up a separate bill to protect Dreamers and he did not believe it would be included in the border security deal.
