U.S. Congress votes to reopen the federal government, reauthorize CHIP for six years

Round one of the #Trump­Shut­down appears to be over.

Today, majori­ties in each house of the Unit­ed States Con­gress vot­ed to reopen and fund the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment through Feb­ru­ary 8th, 2018, as well as reau­tho­rize the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram (CHIP) for anoth­er six years, after Sen­ate Democ­rats reached under­stand­ing with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans regard­ing the fate of DACA — the Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals initiative.

“We will vote today to reopen the gov­ern­ment, to con­tin­ue nego­ti­at­ing a glob­al agree­ment, with the com­mit­ment that, if an agree­ment is not reached by Feb 8th, the Sen­ate will imme­di­ate­ly pro­ceed to con­sid­er­a­tion of leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with DACA. The process will be neu­tral & fair,” tweet­ed Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York around mid­day East­ern time.

“I am con­fi­dent that there are six­ty votes in the Sen­ate for a DACA deal. And now there is a real path­way to get a bill on the floor and through the Sen­ate. It is a good solu­tion and I will vote for it,” Schumer added.

“I expect [Mitch McConnell] to ful­fill his com­mit­ment to the Sen­ate & abide by this agree­ment. If he does not hon­or our agree­ment, he will have breached the trust of not only the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors but the mem­bers of his own par­ty as well.”

Two votes sub­se­quent­ly took place in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate: a clo­ture vote and a vote on final pas­sage of an appro­pri­a­tions res­o­lu­tion. The vote counts on each motion were iden­ti­cal: the ayes were eighty-one and the nays eighteen.

The roll calls from the Pacif­ic North­west were as follows:

Ques­tion: On the Clo­ture Motion (Motion to Invoke Clo­ture: Motion to Con­cur in the House Amend­ment to the Sen­ate Amend­ment to H.R. 195 with Fur­ther Amendment )

and

Ques­tion: On the Motion (Motion to Con­cur in the House Amend­ment to the Sen­ate Amend­ment with Fur­ther Amendment )

Vot­ing Aye: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA); Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Lisa Murkows­ki and Dan Sul­li­van (AK), Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Steve Daines (MT)

Vot­ing Nay: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT)

Both cau­cus­es were divid­ed on the afore­men­tioned ques­tions, although the Democ­rats were far more divid­ed than the Republicans.

Two Repub­li­cans (Rand Paul of Ken­tucky and Mike Lee of Utah) joined six­teen Democ­rats in vot­ing no. The remain­ing Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans vot­ed aye.

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray sent NPI a lengthy state­ment explain­ing her ratio­nale for vot­ing aye, which we’ll share in full con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance of today’s vote.

I am very glad that Pres­i­dent Trump and Repub­li­can lead­ers have stepped back from the precipice and have end­ed their gov­ern­ment shut­down and com­mit­ted to allow­ing Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans to work togeth­er on leg­is­la­tion to address the many chal­lenges fac­ing the fam­i­lies we represent.

I know that there will be legit­i­mate con­cerns and ques­tions about the com­mit­ments that Repub­li­can lead­ers have made today. I share those con­cerns, and I am going to be watch­ing Repub­li­can lead­ers’ actions over the com­ing weeks, not just their words — and I stand ready to hold this Repub­li­can Con­gress account­able for results.

I sup­port this short-term agree­ment not because I blind­ly trust Repub­li­can lead­ers to deliv­er on their com­mit­ments, but because I believe this path offers us the best chance to reach a com­pre­hen­sive deal to pro­tect fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties in this Repub­li­can Congress.

Repub­li­can lead­ers clear­ly under­stand that a major­i­ty of Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans sup­port bipar­ti­san solu­tions to the chal­lenges in front of us, and they now real­ize that they can’t keep the gov­ern­ment shut down in an attempt to stop that work from being done.

If Repub­li­can lead­ers renege on their com­mit­ment to work with us and to allow votes on the crit­i­cal issues before us, they will shut down the gov­ern­ment in just a few weeks and the pres­sure will be right back on them to work with us.

Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans agree that we should increase invest­ments in health care, edu­ca­tion, vet­er­ans’ care, and oth­er domes­tic and defense pri­or­i­ties — and now that Repub­li­cans have end­ed their shut­down, we need to work togeth­er to get that done.

Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans agree that we should final­ly pass a long-term exten­sion of the crit­i­cal pri­ma­ry care pro­grams that Repub­li­cans have allowed to expire months ago— and now that Repub­li­cans have end­ed their shut­down, we need to work togeth­er to get that done.

Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans agree that since the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion abrupt­ly end­ed the DACA pro­gram last fall, we should final­ly pass leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect our DREAM­ers who have known no home but Amer­i­ca and who live in con­stant fear for their futures — and now that Repub­li­cans have end­ed their shut­down, we need to work togeth­er to get that done. Repub­li­can lead­ers have made a com­mit­ment on this, and I am going to be hold­ing their feet to the fire.

There are bipar­ti­san solu­tions to all of these chal­lenges, and now that Repub­li­cans have stepped back from their com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary gov­ern­ment shut­down and say they are ready to work with us on respon­si­ble solu­tions — we need to tack­le them togeth­er, right now, with­out delay.

Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley of Ore­gon had a dif­fer­ent take.

While spend­ing the past year jam­ming through a leg­isla­tive wish-list for the priv­i­leged and pow­er­ful, Pres­i­dent Trump and his con­gres­sion­al allies have time and time again neglect­ed the pri­or­i­ties of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Fund­ing for children’s health care and com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters has lapsed; the opi­oid cri­sis has gone unad­dressed; and hun­dreds of thou­sands of DREAM­ers have been left to live in limbo.

This unwill­ing­ness to gov­ern reached a peak on Fri­day, when Trump and Repub­li­cans brought us the Trump Shut­down rather than reach a deal on these crit­i­cal, bipar­ti­san priorities.

I per­sis­tent­ly argued that we should keep the gov­ern­ment open while we nego­ti­ate, but that we need a short­er time­frame – one- to three-day incre­ments – to hold Trump’s and McConnell’s feet to the fire. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader struck down the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tions that would have accom­plished this.

My con­cern with the three-week exten­sion adopt­ed today is that the Repub­li­can lead­er­ship will fail to nego­ti­ate for 15 of the next 17 days. Fur­ther­more, Leader McConnell’s track record of keep­ing his ‘com­mit­ments’ is thin at best. For that rea­son, I vot­ed no today.

I stand ready to work with all of my col­leagues to make urgent­ly-need­ed progress on these crit­i­cal issues fac­ing the Amer­i­can peo­ple. It’s past time that we gov­erned ‘of, by and for the peo­ple,’ not just for the priv­i­leged and powerful.

After the Sen­ate vot­ed to reopen the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the House vot­ed to con­cur and send the leg­is­la­tion to 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue for a sig­na­ture. Two hun­dred and six­ty-six mem­bers vot­ed aye while one hun­dred and fifty vot­ed nay.

As in the Sen­ate, both cau­cus­es were divid­ed, although the mar­gins were dif­fer­ent. About three-fourths of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus vot­ed nay, with the remain­der vot­ing aye. The Repub­li­can cau­cus had five nay votes.

QUESTION: On Motion to Con­cur in the Sen­ate Amend­ment to the House Amend­ment to the Sen­ate Amend­ment (H.R. 195)

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Suzan Del­Bene, Den­ny Heck, and Derek Kilmer (WA); Repub­li­cans Dan New­house, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, and Dave Reichert (WA), Greg Walden (OR), Don Young (AK), Raul Labrador and Mike Simp­son (ID), Greg Gian­forte (MT)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Prami­la Jaya­pal, Adam Smith, and Rick Larsen (WA), Earl Blu­me­nauer, Pete DeFazio, Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, and Kurt Schrad­er (OR)

Not Vot­ing: Repub­li­can Jame Her­rera-Beut­ler (WA)

Here’s Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal on why she vot­ed no.

Today, I vot­ed no on this most recent con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion, the fifth since Sep­tem­ber. Let me be clear, these con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tions are only nec­es­sary because of gross incom­pe­tence from Repub­li­cans who con­trol the House, Sen­ate and the White House.

Last Fri­day, the gov­ern­ment shut down because, even though Repub­li­cans con­trol all three branch­es of gov­ern­ment, they sim­ply can­not com­pe­tent­ly govern.

Now, the Repub­li­can Sen­ate major­i­ty leader has giv­en his word that he will address the many pri­or­i­ties nec­es­sary to come to agree­ment on a bud­get — such as com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters, the opi­oid cri­sis and dis­as­ter relief. He also promised that he would bring for­ward a vote on a bipar­ti­san deal that would pro­tect Dream­ers from deportation.

As much as I hope that the major­i­ty leader will keep his promise, Repub­li­cans have done noth­ing to con­vince me that we should trust them. On Feb­ru­ary 8, the Amer­i­can peo­ple will find out if Repub­li­cans can keep their word on the promis­es they made to get the votes for this fifth con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion – or if they will once again refuse to gov­ern com­pe­tent­ly. The Amer­i­can peo­ple will find out if Repub­li­cans have any inter­est in pro­tect­ing Dream­ers with a per­ma­nent solu­tion and a path­way to citizenship.

I hope they do, but if they don’t, Amer­i­ca will have a chance to make them face the con­se­quences of their intransigence.

Let us also be clear that along with incom­pe­tence in gov­ern­ing, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Repub­li­can lead­er­ship and some mem­bers of their par­ty have shown they will con­tin­ue to use immi­grants as scape­goats. Pres­i­dent Trump him­self cre­at­ed this cri­sis for 1.5 mil­lion young Dream­ers who now face depor­ta­tion from the only coun­try they know and can claim as home. Repub­li­cans keep mov­ing the goal­posts and chang­ing the nego­ti­a­tions. Now they want to add end­ing legal immi­gra­tion and fam­i­ly reuni­fi­ca­tion – cor­ner­stones of our immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy for 50 years – into the mix. That is unacceptable.

Today, though, my heart breaks for Amer­i­cans who rely on their com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters but have no fund­ing for them, for our com­mu­ni­ties rav­aged by opi­oids, and for the peo­ple of Puer­to Rico and the Vir­gin Islands who are lit­er­al­ly dying as Repub­li­cans choose expe­di­ent pol­i­tics over the chal­lenge of effec­tive­ly gov­ern­ing. And my heart breaks for our Dream­ers who fear depor­ta­tion. These brave young peo­ple are Amer­i­ca, and Repub­li­cans are destroy­ing their lives.

We will update this post with addi­tion­al state­ments as they are received. Many mem­bers of Con­gress have yet to com­ment on the record regard­ing the ratio­nale for their vote either for or against this con­tin­u­ing resolution.

The recep­tion to the deal from well-known pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions has been decid­ed­ly unfa­vor­able so far. Here’s a roundup of reactions:

• Democ­ra­cy for America
• Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Committee
• OneAm­er­i­ca
• CREDO Action

The New York Times’ Nate Cohn, on the oth­er hand, tweet­ed that he thinks that Democ­rats may have played the best hand that they could, say­ing: “I appear to be the only per­son who thinks the Dems played this pret­ty well.”

This analy­sis from Huff­Post’s Matt Fuller is also worth a read.