Congress Braces For A Brutal Spring
By Alice Ollstein | February 5, 2018 6:00 am
The short-term budget Congress threw together to end the government shutdown in January will expire this week, and lawmakers have yet to solve any of the disagreements that brought them to the brink in the first place.
Negotiations over the fate of 700,000 young immigrants whose protections Trump revoked last year have stalled out—with moderates attempting to craft a narrower deal and the White House threatening to veto anything that doesn’t include provisions to slash legal immigration. And because Congress has yet to cut a deal to set new budget caps on military and domestic spending, lawmakers will have to pass yet another stop-gap continuing resolution by Feb. 8 to avoid another shutdown. Hanging over all of this is the debt ceiling, which Congress must raise earlier than expected because the GOP tax bill is already costing the government tens of billions in revenue.
With an eye on the midterm elections this fall, lawmakers are hesitant to stick their necks out for tough compromises, making agreement on all these issues an even heavier lift. Welcome to the spring of Congress’ nightmares.
With less than a week left before their self-imposed deadline to strike a bipartisan deal on immigration, Congress has made almost no progress. High-level meetings between House and Senate leaders in both parties are going nowhere, with each side accusing the other of intransigence, and more collegial bipartisan meetings between rank-and-file senators are still in the brainstorming phase, far from drafting an actual bill.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/congress-heads-toward-showdowns-on-spending-caps-and-debt-ceiling
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