Senate passes funding deal, but short-term shutdown still expected
A temporary funding lapse will start Saturday before the House returns to consider the agreement early next week.
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The Senate passed a bill Friday to fund most of the federal government and buy more time to debate new accountability measures for immigration agents, but many agencies will still shutter this weekend.
The vote was 71-29. Five Republicans and 23 Democrats voted against the bill, as did Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont), an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
The House will not consider the spending legislation until early next week, setting off a partial shutdown just past midnight. The effect of the lapse in funding is expected to be relatively limited compared with the 43-day government shutdown last fall, the longest in history.
Senate Republicans and the White House agreed to Democrats’ demand to break off funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a larger spending bill after federal immigration authorities killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The bill would fund DHS at existing levels for two weeks to give lawmakers and the Trump administration time to try to hash out a deal to impose new restrictions on immigration enforcement that Democrats are seeking.
Some Democrats said even two weeks of funding was too generous.
“I’ve made my position clear: not another dime for Trump’s lawless ICE operations means not another dime — not even for one more day,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said in a statement.
One Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet (Colorado), criticized the deal before the vote. He vowed to vote against the legislation because he had “no confidence the Trump administration will participate in good faith negotiations” to enact the restrictions on DHS that Democrats have demanded, though he did not say whether he planned to hold up the package.
The deal was temporarily held up as senators of both parties sought amendment votes on their own policy priorities. Unanimous consent is necessary to bypass the Senate’s rules and vote quickly, allowing any one senator to hold up the process.
Senators rejected seven amendments to the legislation, including one from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to eliminate earmarks in the bill and another from Sanders to rescind funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that was in the Republican tax and spending law last year and redirect it to Medicaid.
Beyond amendments, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) sought a commitment for a future vote to protect a measure that allows senators — but not House members — to sue over having their phone records obtained without their knowledge. The current appropriations package would reverse that measure, which was drafted in response to an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Graham said he wants to expand the provision to apply to any group or individual whose phone records are obtained in the investigation.
Graham also demanded a vote on legislation that would criminalize “sanctuary cities,” which limit their cooperation with the federal government on enforcing immigration laws. Graham argued that Republicans should stand up on what he called “an 80 percent issue” for the party.
“We cannot live in a country this way — where you get to pick and choose the laws you don’t like,” he said in a floor speech Friday. “If you want to reform ICE, count me in. But if you don’t get to the root cause of the problem, then you’re really not serious about solving it.”
Graham said later that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told him he supports holding a vote on the sanctuary cities legislation.
A funding lapse will begin because the House, which is scheduled to be out of town until Monday, must pass the bill before Trump can sign it into law.