Republicans, Dems break through resistance, move forward with Trump-backed funding package

Senate Republicans and Democrats locked in an agreement to move forward with a behemoth funding package, smashing through resistance on both sides of the aisle. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., teed up the final vote for the package Friday after hours of quelling resistance among Senate Republicans. Lawmakers will plow through several amendments before voting on the package, which is expected to pass and head to the House. 

That also means that, despite their best efforts, a government shutdown is all but guaranteed given that the deadline to fund the government is midnight Friday. 

The move came after President Donald Trump intervened to strike a deal with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Thursday, which will strip out the controversial Department of Homeland Security funding bill and tee up a two-week funding extension to keep the agency afloat. 

Trump urged Senate Republicans to support the plan in a post on Truth Social, where he argued that the only thing ‘that can slow our Country down is another long and damaging Government Shutdown’

‘I am working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the Government, without delay,’ Trump said. ‘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 continued.

It’s a bitter pill for Senate Republicans, who pushed onward with the original six-bill funding package despite Senate Democrats making clear that they would not support it if the DHS bill was still attached. 

Still, the successful first step virtually guarantees that the new, skinnier five-bill bundle and two-week continuing resolution (CR) will advance out of the Senate.

But it won’t prevent a partial government shutdown. 

That’s because the modification to the package, coupled with the CR for DHS, will need to be agreed to by the House, which is not in session until next week, at the earliest. From there, it is unclear how long it will take lawmakers in the lower chamber to process the bill, and resistance is mounting among angry fiscal hawks.

But Democrats aren’t walking away with everything they want, either. Before rapidly unifying behind the plan to block the DHS bill, Democratic leadership argued that a CR of any kind would effectively allow Trump to have a ‘slush fund’ for immigration operations.

Renegotiating the Homeland Security funding bill could backfire, too, given that congressional Democrats originally agreed to the restrictions baked into the current legislation and Republicans aren’t thrilled to relitigate the bill.