The Republican House passed a short-term spending bill Tuesday evening, ahead of the shutdown deadline of Thursday at midnight. It would expire March 23, and includes a full year of defense spending and a two years of funding for community health centers, finally. However, and Speaker Paul Ryan knows this, the Senate cannot pass this bill. Democrats won't fund the Pentagon for a full year, with a budget increase no less, without resolving funding for the rest of the government.
Meanwhile, Democratic leadership has apparently agreed to completely decouple immigration and the Dream Act from budget and shutdown negotiations, and are just working on a budget deal with Republicans.
A two-year budget deal under discussion would cost more than $250 billion for this fiscal year and the next one that begins Oct. 1. Defense caps for each year would be raised by about $80 billion, while non-defense spending limits would be raised by about $60 billion. Budget maneuvers would be used to add more domestic spending, allowing Democrats to claim that defense and non-defense are being treated equally.
Both McConnell and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that a deal could be reached soon.
Potentially included in this larger budget deal is an increase in the debt limit, which is likely to be reached in early March. That's got the Freedom Caucus all worked up, with Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) saying "We've had some very, very contentious conversations in the last 24 hours," and the discussion "puts us at odds with some in our own party," which all observers will find shocking. Increasing domestic spending and quietly dealing with the debt ceiling "will be a Christmas tree of spending," says Meadows, and "a lot of votes will be bought."
Rank-and-file Democrats, meanwhile, are livid that Senate leadership has decided to leave Dreamers out of these negotiations and are relying on Mitch McConnell's promise to bring the issue to the floor in the next few weeks. Both Democratic and Republican senators say DACA talks are progressing and the outlines of a short-term fix of a path to citizenship in exchange for border funding is in the works. The results of that, of course, depend entirely on Trump. Ryan says he won't bring any bill to the floor of the House that Trump won't sign, because Ryan either does not understand how Congress is supposed to work or refuses to do his job.
The end result is that government is not going to shut down and we very well may avoid a debt ceiling hostage-taking, which is critical. Because while all these negotiations are progressing quite nicely in the Congress, Trump is screaming for his shutdown. The damage he could do with the debt ceiling is a terrifying prospect.