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Category: Legislation

Immigration Stalled Again

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The Senate on Thursday effectively failed to move forward with any of four immigration proposals put forward today. This included a Republican proposal backed by President Donald Trump that would grant 1.8 million “Dreamers” a path to citizenship and provide $25 billion for a border wall and security improvements.

The action came on a 39-60 vote to limit debate on an amendment by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), to an unrelated bill (HR 2579) related to the Administration’s “Four Pillars” proposal  Sixty votes were needed to invoke cloture.

Grassley’s proposal mirrored Trump’s framework to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers brought to the United States as children in exchange for border security funding. It would also end family-based immigration or “chain migration” and phase out a diversity lottery program. Democrats considered the restrictions on family-based immigration a nonstarter.

The Senate earlier rejected three other immigration proposals, including a bipartisan deal by 16 mostly centrist Senators, calling themselves the “Common Sense Caucus,” that Trump threatened to veto because it did not do enough to limit family-based immigration.

All amendments failed this afternoon.

There was no clear path forward in the House for any of these proposals.

Monday Noon

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The Senate has scheduled a vote on a CR to reopen the government for Monday at noon. The CR will reportedly be the same as the previous CR, funding CHIP and eliminating the Cadillac tax, but it will not address DACA or Dreamers. To clarify, negotiations remain ongoing, and this is not a deal. Rather, it is the same bill passed by the House that failed to gain cloture in the Senate with a different date — February 9 vs. February 16.

Stay tuned.

CR Stymied in Senate

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After the House passage of the four-week CR, the Senate then voted to begin deliberations. However,  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to lack the 60 votes required to send the CR to President Trump for his signature. There are 51 Republican Senators and several Republican Senators have announced they would not vote for the House-passed measure.

House and Senate Democrats are largely united in opposing the measure, partly out of frustration with the failure of congressional leaders to reach a bipartisan deal that would raise spending caps for the current fiscal year and offer a legislative fix to protect immigrant “Dreamers” from deportation.

House Releases $81 Billion Supplemental

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Totaling $81 billion, the supplemental spending bill (HR 4667) released Monday evening is $37 billion more than the $44 billion the Trump Administration requested in mid-November. As supplemental appropriations, the money is designated as emergency spending, which does not require offsets under congressional budget rules. The White House included a list of offsets, which can be found here.

If approved as is, this latest disaster aid bill would bring the emergency spending total to $132.75 billion this year — significantly surpassing the $60 billion spent in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the $120 billion appropriated after Hurricane Katrina.

The bill includes:

  • $27.6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency
  • $26.1 billion for Community Development Block Grants for disaster recovery
  • $12.1 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers
  • $3.8 billion for agriculture recovery
  • $2.9 billion to assist schools in affected areas to rebuild and refurbish
  • $1.6 billion for the Small Business Administration disaster loan program
  • $1.5 billion to repair military facilities
  • $1.4 billion for damages to federal highways
  • $600 million in economic development grants

The bill includes language that would allow individuals who have lost property to wildfires to deduct damage costs on their taxes, would remove the penalty for withdrawing money from a retirement account and would incentivize donations to people and regions rebuilding after wildfires.

House leadership has not yet announced whether the supplemental aid package will be added to the stopgap spending bill (H J Res 124) heading to the House Rules Committee on today and the House floor after that.

Current stopgap funding  expires Dec. 22.

House Passes Tax Bill; Senate Action Awaits

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Earlier this afternoon, the House passed H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, by a vote of 227 to 205. A total of 13 Republicans joined every Democrat in opposing the bill.

Even as the House was considering its bill on the floor, the Senate Finance Committee has been debating its version of the measure since Monday.  Late on Tuesday, the committee leadership decided to add a provision that would repeal the individual insurance mandate currently in law as part of the Affordable Care Act.  Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) announced his opposition to the bill yesterday, making the Republican leadership’s current vote margin on the bill even smaller.

The goal of the proponents of this effort is to get a bill signed into law by the holidays.