The Senate Just Reached a Deal to Fund the Government

The immigration debate is next.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., right, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.Tom Williams/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

After months of stop-gap measures, Senate leaders say they’ve reached an agreement to fund the government for two years while raising spending levels. The budget deal would increase domestic and defense spending by about $300 billion, and provide an additional $90 billion of disaster relief, the Washington Post reports. Congress has until Thursday night to pass a funding bill to keep the government open.

The deal, brokered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), would provide billions of dollars in funding for Veterans Affairs hospitals, infrastructure, and the opioid crisis. It would also extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program for an additional four years, on top of the the six-year extension passed last month. In the coming weeks, lawmakers will turn the deal into specific spending legislation. In the meantime, the Senate is expected to pass another stopgap to avert a shutdown.

After months of fighting over the tax bill and immigration, McConnell and Schumer praised each other for their bipartisanship. “I particularly want to thank my friend, the Democratic leader,” McConnell said. Schumer responded by saying that “we have worked well together for the good of the American people” and called the deal a “genuine breakthrough.”

The compromise does not address the status of Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children. Last year, President Donald Trump ended an Obama-era program that protected hundreds of thousands of Dreamers from deportation. In January, Senate Democrats voted against a short-term spending bill because it did not provide protections for Dreamers. The three-day shutdown it triggered ended after McConnell agreed to allow debate on immigration legislation if Democrats backed a spending bill this week.

McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will not bring a specific immigration bill to the floor. Instead, he will allow Senators to introduce amendments to shape potential immigration legislation. McConnell said that the process will be “fair to all sides,” before adding that he cannot guarantee any outcome.  

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said that she and many other Democrats will only back the spending deal if Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) agrees to hold a vote on an immigration bill that covers Dreamers. McConnell and Schumer’s agreement would likely need Democratic votes to pass the House.

Ryan has said Trump’s support is a precondition for any immigration bill that he brings to the House floor. The White House’s current immigration plan calls for trading a path to citizenship for Dreamers for border wall funding and steep cuts to legal immigration. Democrats and immigration advocates consider Trump’s framework a nonstarter.

After attacking Democrats for the January shutdown, Trump said on Tuesday that he’d “love to see a shutdown” if the spending bill doesn’t address his immigration priorities. “Without borders we don’t have a country,” Trump said. “So would I shut it down over this issue? Yes.”

The spending deal ignores Trump’s shutdown threat. According to Politico, the White House is likely to back it anyway.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate