Sen. Rand Paul’s government shutdown ended at about 5:30 ET Friday morning, when the House passed the budget agreement and extended government funding to March 23. The fifth short-term funding bill of the 2018 fiscal year. Yay, Congress.
Because it’s Republicans in charge, the agreement is really expensive, and not so much on the spending side. Because of the additional tax cuts they threw in, the price tag was hiked to $320 billion to 10-year deficits, putting the potential final tally—if all its provisions are made permanent—to $2 trillion. When you add in the $1.5+ trillion from the tax scam they passed last year, the next Democratic president is going to have a hell of a mess to clean up. As usual.
To Trump’s delight it ” gave [the Military] everything—and more.” Parade money! To his chagrin, “we were forced to increase spending on things we do not like or want.” Like $90 billion in disaster aid for Texas, Florida, California, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Note that other western states which experienced devastating wildfires as well were not included in that disaster aid. It also has a lot of funding for critical health programs, including tacking another four years of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (which actually saves money) and community health centers (finally) as well as a number of smaller, but no less important, programs for which funding had lapsed. It renews tax breaks for NASCAR, race horses and rum. It extends the debt ceiling until March 2019, which might be the best news.
The bad news is, of course, it leaves out Dreamers. Ryan needed 67 Democrats to help pass his bill, and they eventually provided it, giving away much of Nancy Pelosi’s leverage in negotiating on immigration. While Trump and the Republicans won’t be able to use the debt ceiling negotiations against Democrats on immigration efforts, Ryan is still following Trump’s marching order, insisting that he’ll only bring a bill to the floor that Trump will sign. That led to Pelosi’s zinger calling him “Speaker of the White House,” and this statement following the vote pledging to continue to fight for Dreamers.
“The fight in the House to protect Dreamers is not over. I’m greatly disappointed that the Speaker does not have the courage to lift the shadow of fear from the lives of these inspiring young people. When we protect the Dreamers, we honor the highest ideals of America. Their patriotism, their perseverance, their optimism are an inspiration that stirs the conscience of our entire nation.”
The Senate will start debate on a shell of an immigration bill Friday afternoon, with the promise from McConnell of an open-ended amendment process. It’s going to take a continued fight from Democrats and activists and us to fight off bad amendments and to force Ryan to do his job.