After dedicating three days of floor time and casting a grand total of four votes on different proposals to address the precarious future of 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the country as children, the United States Senate is taking a week off. And when lawmakers return from their holiday, most Republicans say they’ll be ready to move on to other issues.
“I don’t see us coming back to it for some weeks,” North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis said Thursday afternoon. “I mean, when we get back, we have the spending bill that’s going to consume time … So we come back the week after next. I know that we have a banking bill. We’ve got a lot of nominations. We’ve got a lot of other work we need to do.”
That was a common refrain among his colleagues after the chamber voted down all four pieces of legislation they considered that would have dealt with immigration and border security.
On Thursday afternoon, a bipartisan bill drafted by a large working group of senators who call themselves the “Common Sense Caucus” failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance the measure in the legislative process, falling on a vote of 54-45. President Donald Trump’s more conservative immigration bill, which would have cut legal immigration by nearly 40 percent while offering a pathway to citizenship for about 1.8 million Dreamers, performed the most poorly among the options the chamber considered, failing on a vote of 39-60.
“Cannot believe how BADLY DACA recipients have been treated by the Democrats…totally abandoned! Republicans are still working hard,” Trump tweeted Friday morning, even as Republicans were sending different signals the night before.
“I think there is no next move,” said Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, afterward.
Leading up to the debate, Kennedy was enthusiastic about the rare opportunity it presented to participate in an open, robust policy debate in the Senate. Members were supposed to be able to pitch all the ideas their hearts desired during an amendments free-for-all, voting down different proposals in a constructive process that would theoretically produce a solid piece of legislation. The fair process was a promise from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as part of a January deal with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to reopen the government after a weekend spending lapse.
But that’s not how the week played out.
“We set aside a whole week to try to resolve this issue, and all Senator Schumer did was stall and re-stall,” a visibly frustrated Kennedy said. “I try not to be too partisan, but we were ready Monday night,” he added.
Senate leaders set the stage for failure early in the week, when they found themselves at an impasse over which bill to vote on first. (Yes, really. They couldn’t agree on whose plan to consider first.) Republicans blame Schumer for holding up the process. Restricted by procedure, GOP leaders needed consent from Democrats to do away with a 30-hour debate requirement to proceed on a faster timeline.
McConnell wanted to kick things off with a vote on an amendment offered by Sen. Pat Toomey relating to sanctuary cities, alongside a vote on a bill of the Democrats’ choosing. Schumer objected, saying he wanted to start the debate “off on the right foot” by considering legislation that actually pertained to DACA recipients. He called for McConnell to hold the first two votes on Trump’s preferred bill, introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley and John Cornyn, and a pared-down bipartisan fix introduced by Sens. John McCain and Chris Coons.
Republicans did not want to put Trump’s plan on the floor, because it would fail miserably and set the tone for the rest of the debate. Due to the stalemate, the Senate did not actually vote on any amendments until the three days devoted to the issue were practically over.
“He wanted to set the agenda,” Cornyn said of Schumer’s tactic.
Asked why Republicans were opposed to holding a vote on Trump’s plan first, Cornyn answered, “Well, because the minority doesn’t set the agenda. And of course [Schumer] wanted to have the president’s bill voted on first, because when that — if that — failed, then he felt that would maximize the chance of the alternative getting enough votes.”
But if Trump’s plan had been allowed to fail earlier in the week, wouldn’t that have opened the door to bipartisan negotiations to find an agreement?
“We would actually have a real debate, perhaps,” Cornyn admitted. “But it was pretty clear the Democrats were only interested in consolidating their vote and picking off enough Republicans to get to 60.”
He pointed to the GOP majority in the House (also known as the chamber where bipartisan immigration bills go to die) and Trump’s own ardent opposition to the bipartisan deal that the Common Sense Caucus came up with, saying he did not understand how Democrats thought they were going to make a law.
Mixed signals from the White House may have contributed to the belief that there was a chance for compromise. Before drastically reversing his position, Trump pledged in a January meeting with lawmakers that he would sign whatever bill Congress could pass, even if he wasn’t “in love” with it. “I am signing it. I will be signing it. I’m not going to say, ‘Oh gee, I want this or I want that.’ I will be signing it,” Trump told members of Congress that day. On Thursday, the White House waged an all-out war on the bipartisan plan that had the best chance of passing the Senate.
As for what comes next, the answer is as unclear as ever.
Republicans in the House are trying to gather enough support to pass a conservative immigration bill introduced by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, but it would have as little chance in the Senate as Grassley’s bill did. Some senators have kicked around the idea of passing short term protections for Dreamers.
Cornyn said it was time to go back to the drawing board. He predicted the issue will come up again as lawmakers face a March 23 deadline to pass an appropriations bill to keep the government funded. “My guess is some people will look at the omnibus as a vehicle to try to do something to get us past that March 5 [DACA expiration] deadline,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday evening. He suggested such a deal could include border security in exchange for a short term DACA fix.
But after a week of feuding amongst themselves and with the White House, optimism among senators is low.
“I’m ready to move on. I mean, we just wasted a whole week,” summarized Senator Kennedy.
