The Senate has reached a deal to hold votes on a $1.7 trillion government spending package, paving the way for passage as early as Thursday to avoid a Christmas Eve shutdown.
(Bloomberg) — The Senate has reached a deal to hold votes on a $1.7 trillion government spending package, paving the way for passage as early as Thursday to avoid a Christmas Eve shutdown.
A move to quickly advance the package of $45 billion in Ukraine aid in a broader spending package hours after an historic address by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy got sidetracked late Wednesday over a dispute about US border security.
The Senate had been expected to vote on the assistance as part of the spending package late in the evening. Those plans were delayed after Democrats rejected a proposal by Republican Senator Mike Lee for an amendment extending pandemic-era asylum restrictions, known as Title 42, on the southern border of the US.
The deal allows a vote on the Lee amendment while giving Democrats a vote on an alternative from independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Democrat Jon Tester of Montana. It would spend billions more on border security and immigration enforcement and extend Title 42 until a plan is in place to manage the influx of immigrants at the US southern border.
That measure would give centrist Democrats political cover to vote against the Lee amendment and still say they support stronger border enforcement. A Republican senator said the bill’s added provisions are poisoned pills that would force the GOP to vote it down.
A Democratic aide said Lee’s amendment would have gotten votes from some Democrats and its adoption would have wrecked chances for passage of the full-year funding plan because it would make the legislation toxic for Democratic progressives in the House. That, in turn, would force Congress to pass a stopgap bill to keep the government running after Dec. 23, when current funding runs out.
The same amendment threat scuttled an attempt to pass billions in coronavirus aid earlier this year.
Passing temporary funding legislation would push key funding decisions into next year, when Republicans will have control of the House, and give GOP conservatives a chance to reshape the bill to cut spending and, potentially, shrink the assistance for Ukraine.
The Biden administration is preparing to end the Title 42 restrictions, though the Supreme Court is now weighing the policy’s fate.
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