The Senate could vote as soon as Thursday night on a White House-brokered deal to fund the government after Democrats agreed to punt a fight over Department of Homeland Security spending for another two weeks.
President Donald Trump called on the Senate to pass a slate of five bills that would fund the vast majority of the federal government, alongside a short-term spending patch for DHS, which has become embroiled in controversy over the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on Saturday.
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote,” Trump posted on Truth Social, shortly after Democrats announced the agreement.
Congressional leaders must still reach a deal that fast-tracks the legislation across the Senate floor, as a single senator can hold the bill up. But the announcement represents a major breakthrough and will likely prevent a protracted government shutdown on Friday at midnight.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll have a good, strong vote on both sides,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told the Washington Examiner.
Scheduling that vote requires leadership to work through a set of amendment requests, with some holdouts suggesting they will delay the bill unless their priorities get a vote. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who opposed a procedural step earlier in the day with six other Republicans, said that he will let the funding move forward if the Senate considers $5 billion in “refugee welfare money” he wants stripped from the Health and Human Services bill.
But the single biggest obstacle to a deal — how long the DHS funding patch should last — was hammered out by late afternoon between Democrats and the White House. Under the deal, Washington will have two additional weeks to negotiate a compromise over how to rein in the conduct of immigration agents, who killed Pretti and one other U.S. citizen in Minneapolis this month.
There was some question as to whether the House, currently on a one-week recess, could pass the bill and avert a shutdown, given that its members are out of town, but on Thursday evening, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) appeared to close the door on that possibility, telling USA TODAY not to expect a vote sooner than Monday.
WHITE HOUSE STEPS UP FUNDING TALKS WITH SENATE DEMOCRATS AS SHUTDOWN GROWS NEAR
“We may inevitably be in a short shutdown situation,” he said. “But the House is going to do its job.”
A funding patch for DHS would stave off a more difficult debate over how to reform immigration enforcement after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis. Democrats released a set of “legislative objectives” to rein in ICE on Wednesday, naming a ban on face masks and the end of “roving patrols” as among their demands to extend funding for the rest of the fiscal year.
