House Passes Stopgap Bill With $5 Billion for Border Security & $7 Billion for Disaster Relief
Do you support including border security & disaster relief in the CR?
(Updated 12/20 - 8:00pm ET) On a 217-185 vote, the House passed its amended version of the stopgap funding bill. The Senate will be in session to debate it tomorrow ahead of the midnight Friday funding deadline.
After President Donald Trump told House Republican leaders on Thursday that he wouldn’t sign the stopgap funding bill the Senate unanimously passed the night because it didn’t include $5 billion in funding for border security.
That prompted GOP leaders to come up with a new plan to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday by adding $5.7 billion for border security and $7.8 billion for disaster relief to the continuing resolution (CR).
Earlier in the day, the House adopted ‘martial law’ or same-day authority ― which lets the Rules Committee send a resolution structuring debate around a bill (in this case the CR through February 8th) to the floor and, if approved, set up debate and a passage vote for the underlying bill the same day.
That allowed the Rules Committee to report a rule for the CR that was revised with an amendment aimed at meeting President Trump’s demand by providing $5.7 billion in funding for border security and $7.8 billion in disaster relief. A vote on the amended bill will likely occur Thursday evening.
What happens if it passes?
The amended bill would then have to be passed by the Senate, and it’s unclear whether it could muster the votes for passage.
Complicating matters, some senators have already left town ― so Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has told them to be prepared for a vote around noon if the House sends over the revised bill.
If the House’s bill doesn’t clear the Senate, then the two chambers would either need to work out a new compromise, or the House could take up the Senate-passed bill that excluded border security & disaster relief funding which would go to President Trump’s desk if passed.
The bill could become law without Congress having to override President Trump's veto if a version of it were to pass each chamber and sit on the president's desk unsigned (either way) for 10 days while Congress remains in session. (Congress often remains nominally in session despite not doing any actual legislative work by holding pro forma sessions and could do so up until the new Congress is seated.)
What happens if nothing passes by midnight Friday?
Then the third partial government shutdown of 2018 will have begun. Read more about what that would look like here, or refresh your memory about the first and second shutdowns.
— Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: iStock.com / FrozenShutter)
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