President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats said Thursday that they had struck an agreement to fund most of the federal government less than 30 hours before spending is set to lapse.
Senate Democrats said Republicans had agreed to their demand to break off funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a larger spending bill after federal immigration officials killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The agreement would fund DHS at existing levels for two more weeks to allow both parties to try to hash out a deal to impose new restrictions on federal immigration enforcement.
Trump said in a social media post that Republicans and Democrats had “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.”
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote,” he added.
Senate Republicans are checking with individual senators for objections, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Any deal would require unanimous consent from senators to pass quickly.
The deal comes after Trump and senators in both parties expressed optimism that they could reach a bipartisan agreement before the shutdown deadline.
“Hopefully, we won’t have a shutdown, and we’re working on that right now. I think we’re getting close,” Trump told reporters at a Cabinet meeting Thursday morning. “The Democrats I don’t believe want to see it either. So we’ll work in a very bipartisan way, I believe, not to have a shutdown. We don’t want to shut down.”
A short funding lapse is still likely, as any changes would need to be approved by the House, which is scheduled to be out of town until Monday.
Getting any agreement through the narrowly divided House could be challenging for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), as conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus said they would oppose changes to the existing bill before Trump called for them to support an extension. But House Republicans are likely to support it as the president has requested, two senior House Republican aides said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“We may inevitably be in a short shutdown situation,” Johnson told reporters Thursday night. “But the House is going to do its job.”
House Democrats do not plan to support the agreement because they are skeptical that serious policy negotiations in the Senate are underway, according to two senior House Democratic aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks. They plan to leave it to Republicans to pass the agreement on their own, unless Johnson asks Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) for help to pass the measure. Jeffries relayed to Johnson in a call Wednesday that to garner Democrats votes, Republicans would need to make numerous concessions.
House Republicans probably will only have a one-vote majority margin when they return to the Capitol next week; a Democrat is expected to win a special election in Texas this weekend.
“We’re talking, but I can’t assess how they might try to get it across the finish line,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said of Johnson. “Obviously that’s a complicating factor for them. But like I said yesterday, we are where we are.”
Senate Democrats did not want to fund DHS for more than two weeks while the two parties negotiate new restrictions that Democrats have demanded.
“People are getting killed in Minneapolis,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told reporters. “We need to show some urgency about fixing the problem.”
Senate Democrats rejected Republican proposals to address their demands through an executive order or separate legislation, which would not require the existing measure to go back through the House.
The funding package covers most discretionary federal spending: It would fund the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Treasury, Transportation, and State.
Without additional appropriations, all government functions in those agencies that aren’t considered necessary to protect life, property or national security would stop, and many workers would have to continue on the job unpaid, as they did during last fall’s long shutdown. But many of the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts would continue because of an influx of funding from the GOP tax and spending law passed last year.
The funding measure was negotiated between Republicans and Democrats before last weekend’s shooting in Minneapolis. It includes $64.4 billion for DHS, including $10 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, similar to existing funding levels.
It includes limited restrictions on the agency, including a decrease in detention beds, reduced funding for Border Patrol and for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, and $20 million for body cameras for ICE and Border Patrol agents. It does not include other changes that Democrats had sought, including prohibitions on ICE agents from shooting at moving vehicles or detaining U.S. citizens.
When the bill was unveiled early last week, some Democrats argued that it was necessary to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies even though it did not do enough to rein in federal immigration agents.
But after agents killed Pretti, even lawmakers who had written the measure said they would oppose it. Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that she wouldn’t vote for the bill without changes and that “there must be accountability” for Pretti’s killing.
Some Democrats opposed the bill even before Pretti’s death, which persuaded most of the rest of the party to come out against it. If all Republicans supported the funding package, they would need at least seven Senate Democrats to back it to overcome the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) on Wednesday demanded Republicans agree to a set of changes to the DHS bill to earn Democrats’ support: end “roving patrols” by requiring warrants in some cases and requiring ICE to coordinate with state and local law enforcement; create a uniform code of conduct for agents and use independent investigations to enforce it; and require agents to wear body cameras and to not wear masks.
Senate Republicans are more open to some of Democrats’ demands than they were ahead of the government shutdown in the fall. Many agree there should be additional oversight after federal immigration officials’ aggressive actions against U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
At a news conference earlier in the day, Jeffries said House Democrats may consider supporting the DHS bill in the future if it includes genuine bipartisan policy reforms.
“We’ll evaluate whatever is sent to us, and if we’re on a path toward dramatic, immediate, transformative change, then I’m sure that will be a part of what heavily weighs into our discussion,” Jeffries told reporters.
Matt Viser contributed to this report.
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