Senate Takes Big Step Toward Funding Gov’t as Some Dems Demand ICE Constraints

The Senate on Thursday passed three appropriations bills in a largely bipartisan 82-15 vote . The three bills, grouped into a minibus, will fund the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Interior and Justice, the EPA, water programs and federal science initiatives through the end of the current fiscal year. The Senate passage comes less than a week after the House passed the minibus in a similarly bipartisan 397-28 vote. After the longest government shutdown in U.S. history last fall - a fight that dragged out as Republicans stonewalled Democrats’ request to extend then-expiring Obamacare subsidies in exchange for their votes to fund the government - the bipartisan passage of the three bill appropriations package suggests government funding is at least somewhat on track ahead of the coming deadline. How exactly Congress will address the coming health care cost crisis - premiums are set to soar for millions of Americans in coming months - remains unclear. The House passed a measure that would revive the expired Obamacare tax credits for three years, but the Senate is unlikely to take up the measure as a bipartisan group attempts to negotiate a separate solution (plus Trump has said he “might” veto the House bill if it were to pass the Senate and be sent to his desk.) Some Democrats are also mulling whether to use the upcoming Jan. 30 government funding deadline to demand Congress place some sort of check on President Trump’s nationwide mass deportation agenda after an ICE agent killed a woman in Minnesota earlier this month. The thinking is similar to their efforts in the fall: Funding the government is Democrats’ greatest point of leverage, and they could stand united in their opposition to any coming funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security unless it comes with some constraints on ICE agents. Some of the ideas being discussed among progressives in the House and Senate include requiring agents to wear identification, mandating judicial warrants for immigration-related arrests and only allowing Custom and Border Protection agents to operate at the border. “Democrats cannot vote for a DHS budget that doesn’t restrain the growing lawlessness of this agency,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said on X in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis. Congress will still have to pass the remaining six appropriations bills, including funding for DHS, or another continuing resolution (CR) before the Jan. 30 deadline - the date the current short-term CR is set to expire - to avoid a partial government shutdown. Three other appropriations bills for funding the Department of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and the legislative branch’s operations, also grouped into a minibus, were passed in November alongside the current CR that reopened the government after the historic government shutdown, which brought the federal government to a halt for more than 40 days. “These bills reassert Congress’ power over key spending decisions, and that could not be more important,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said earlier this week as the Senate took up the minibus. “These bills will...

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