U.S. Senate votes to keep the federal government funded through September 2019

The Unit­ed States Sen­ate vot­ed today to keep the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment fund­ed and open for busi­ness for most of the rest of the year, act­ing under the assump­tion that Don­ald Trump will (reluc­tant­ly) sign a bipar­ti­san appro­pri­a­tions bill recent­ly nego­ti­at­ed by House Democ­rats and Sen­ate Republicans.

The vote in favor of invok­ing clo­ture on House Joint Res­o­lu­tion 31 was eighty-four to fif­teen and the vote on final pas­sage was eighty-three to six­teen.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west on final pas­sage was as follows:

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

The sen­a­tors who vot­ed no were a mix of Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans, and all of them were from states out­side of the Pacif­ic Northwest.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates vot­ing no

• Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Massachusetts
• Cory Book­er of New Jersey
• Kamala Har­ris of California
• Kris­ten Gilli­brand of New York

Oth­er Democ­rats vot­ing no

• Ed Markey of Massachusetts

Repub­li­cans vot­ing no

• Michael Braun of Indiana
• Tom Cot­ton of Arkansas
• Ted Cruz of Texas
• James Inhofe of Oklahoma
• Mike Lee of Utah
• Rand Paul of Kentucky
• Josh Haw­ley of Missouri
• Mar­co Rubio of Florida
• Ben Sasse of Nebraska
• Tim Scott of South Carolina
• Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania

In addi­tion to sign­ing HJR 31, Mitch McConnell says Don­ald Trump will declare a nation­al emer­gency in order to divert fund­ing to con­struct­ing a wall on the coun­try’s bor­der with Mex­i­co, a move Democ­rats say is a total abuse of power.

“The president’s dec­la­ra­tion is an alarm­ing and legal­ly dubi­ous attempt to side­step the con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty grant­ed to Con­gress, the co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment where debates over immi­gra­tion reform and bor­der secu­ri­ty can be held open­ly in the light of day,” said Wash­ing­ton State Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

“There was a time when Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats were will­ing to sit at the table and dis­cuss com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform,” the Gov­er­nor added.

“Under this admin­is­tra­tion, those dis­cus­sions have giv­en way to uni­lat­er­al and rep­re­hen­si­ble actions that sep­a­rate fam­i­lies, imprison chil­dren and launch tear-gas attacks on exhaust­ed moth­ers and fam­i­lies. This dec­la­ra­tion doesn’t do a sin­gle thing to make our nation safer. All it does is fur­ther divide Amer­i­cans, erode our sys­tem of checks and bal­ances, and advance the president’s agen­da of fear and mis­in­for­ma­tion. We should all be out­raged by this president’s abuse of power.”

“For Pres­i­dent Trump to declare a state of emer­gency and cir­cum­vent Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple based on lies and a man­u­fac­tured cri­sis is an out­ra­geous, hor­rif­ic, and un-Amer­i­can abuse of pow­er and I can only hope that he lis­tens to peo­ple across the coun­try and revers­es course imme­di­ate­ly,” said Pat­ty Murray.

“The idea that the Pres­i­dent not being able to pass his waste­ful wall spend­ing through Con­gress — a wall that he promised Mex­i­co would pay for and that wouldn’t even be built for years — con­sti­tutes an ‘emer­gency’ is absolute­ly absurd and deeply wrong. Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans agree on the need to invest in respon­si­ble bor­der secu­ri­ty and tack­le very real human­i­tar­i­an issues, but there is absolute­ly no ‘emer­gency’ and absolute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Pres­i­dent Trump to use this as an excuse to vio­late our Con­sti­tu­tion and laws.”

“If Pres­i­dent Trump takes this unprece­dent­ed step, every Amer­i­can who believes in the Con­sti­tu­tion and the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers in our great repub­lic should be shocked and angry. If Pres­i­dent Trump opens the door to pres­i­dents declar­ing fake emer­gen­cies to fund spend­ing they can’t per­suade the people’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Con­gress to sup­port, then a dan­ger­ous prece­dent has been set that puts our coun­try on a slip­pery and very dan­ger­ous slope.”

“What would stop this pres­i­dent from declar­ing anoth­er emer­gency the next time he wants to do some­thing that Con­gress doesn’t want? This is not the way our gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to work, and this is not remote­ly what was intend­ed when these emer­gency author­i­ties were cre­at­ed. I am going to stand with Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans, and every Amer­i­can who is con­cerned by this and we will fight back.”

“While Pres­i­dent Trump is threat­en­ing to move for­ward with this un-Amer­i­can and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al maneu­ver, today Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in Con­gress once again did their job by ham­mer­ing out a bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise that reject­ed Pres­i­dent Trump’s waste­ful bor­der wall and instead invests in our nation­al pri­or­i­ties and avoids anoth­er com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary shutdown.”

“On behalf of fed­er­al work­ers and fam­i­lies in Wash­ing­ton state and around the coun­try, Pres­i­dent Trump must sign this bipar­ti­san bill to avoid anoth­er Trump Shut­down — and he must lis­ten to the will of the peo­ple and not take uni­lat­er­al and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al action to vio­late this bipar­ti­san agreement.”