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One government shutdown crisis averted, and Congress is barreling toward another over yet another hostage, this one taken by the creature who occupies the Oval Office. Trump has announced that he won't allow action to protect 800,000 undocumented immigrant youth in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unless he gets his border wall and a variety of other white supremacist-inspired demands. Democrats, whose votes are necessary to provide the funding that will keep government running after the next deadline of January 19, are still negotiating, but blinked once already at the last shutdown inflection point in December.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are expected to meet with top White House officials on Wednesday to discuss a myriad of looming policy fights, including DACA. […]
Negotiators are hoping they will have a deal by next month, though wide gaps remain between what GOP lawmakers, the White House and Democrats will accept as part of any agreement. […]
Supporters of a DACA fix believe that the spending and budget negotiations give them the most leverage because GOP leadership will need support from Democrats to keep the government open and prevent automatic across-the-board budget cuts.
"Come January we are focused on the caps, the omnibus and the opportunity they present," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told The Hill.
That's what they said about December, too, but they ended up not insisting on it, not providing a credible shutdown threat and every day dozens of young people continue to lose their work permits and drivers' licenses. They need to make it happen this month, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing back. "There isn't that much of an emergency there. The president's given us until March," he says, dismissing both Democrats and his colleague, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who traded his vote for the tax bill last month for progress on immigration. Flake says he wants it done "earlier in January and attach it to the must pass omnibus bill. That’s just me. ... We just need more time [and] we'll run out of runway if we try to do it the end of February."
Then there's the House, where Flake says he's received a commitment from House Speaker Paul Ryan to fix DACA, but Ryan has promised his conservatives that he "he would not bring up any immigration bill that lacked support from a majority of Republicans." He has to get a majority of his conference on board and fight off the likes of Rep. Steve King (R-IA) (who says that Trump has a "mandate" for his wall) for anything to happen.