A West Wing source says the White House is “cautiously optimistic” that a government shutdown can be avoided by the Friday spending deadline. Questions remain: Can the House pass its continuing resolution (which leadership spent Wednesday whipping on) to fund the government for another month? Defense budget hawks and the most conservative members have remained difficult gets, but as my colleague Haley Byrd reports, GOP leaders are hoping to buy off some Democrats with a six-year extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
But even if the CR passes the House, will Senate Democrats agree to a budget proposal that does not include protection for immigrant beneficiaries of the sunsetting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program? And it’s not just Democrats. Republican Lindsey Graham expressed his opposition to a CR that does not adequately provide for defense funds and does not address the DACA issue. Graham seems to be holding out hope for a bipartisan compromise on DACA, which appears to have no purchase at the White House. (Trump, in an interview with Reuters, called the idea “horrible.”)
