It took many hours of negotiating, during which President Trump intervened to strike a deal by supper time. The five other bills will have enough Democrats to pass, guaranteeing full funding for the Department of Defense (or War, as Trump renamed it), Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education. The DHS funding bill will have to be renegotiated, but the deal includes a two-week CR to buy some time.
“I am working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the Government, without delay,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before).”
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much-needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote,” he added. The Senate gaveled out for the night just after 11 p.m. Eastern and will reconvene at 11 a.m. Friday. After the regular pomp and circumstance that opens every session, the first order of business is calling this vote.
A Deal to Move Forward or a Shutdown Democrats Can Live With?
Assuming the next votes succeed, President Trump will likely sign the five funding bills into law on Friday, averting a shutdown of the included departments at the last minute. The CR to keep DHS afloat beyond January 30, however, will have to be passed by the House before it can be signed by the president.
So DHS funding will technically lapse, at least for a short time, but if the House takes it up as early as possible and passes it without too much dallying, the department won’t feel much, if any, of a practical interruption.
So, will the CR pass the House? Almost certainly. Democrats are on board, and Republicans have little choice but to pass the CR or shoulder the blame for funding everything but DHS – which would seem like a far more satisfying result for lawmakers on the political left. But then what? What will Democrats demand in order to pass an actual funding bill for DHS once there’s no other funding they want that can be threatened by Republicans as leverage? President Trump has tried to abolish the Department of Education, for example, making it a great option for the GOP to dangle as both carrot and stick to entice (or coerce) Democrats into playing ball.
DHS includes the Coast Guard, as the president pointed out in his Truth Social post, but it also comprises ICE and Border Patrol – the sources of the controversy driving the fight over funding. Should Democrats refuse to pass any spending at all for the department – or should they require steep enough cuts to both funding and power for immigration enforcement agencies – this could be the deal that comes back to bite President Trump and the Republican Party right in the midterms.
