Up Date 00:40 ET 1/20/2018: McConnell voted no and the government has officially shut down.
Up Date 23:15 ET AS of this time, the vote to pass the CR has failed 50 – 48 but the clock to close the vote is still running which is unprecedented. Everyone has vote except Mitch McConnell who is trying to bide time to find a solution. It’s obvious the CR as it stands will not pass. There is an apparent attempt to find any deal, even a short one.
Well, it’s been awhile since we’ve played this game. But as of midnight tonight the government will shut down unless the Senate can garner 60 votes to pass a 4 week continuing resolution to keep it running until mid-February. The vote is to take place at 10 PM on the CR that was passed yesterday by the House. The Senate could have voted last night but they new they didn’t have the 60 votes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to wait until the last possible moment thinking that the Democrats needed to pass it would break from their caucus.
This dispute is over the lack of a provision to support the DACA program which protects people brought here as children by their undocumented parents. Donald Trump decided, arbitrarily, to end the program as of March this years tossing the ball to Congress to come up with a solution. Since this Congress is run by Republicans who can’t seem to run anything and keep tripping over their own feet, nothing happened. They also let the populate Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expire leaving millions of children without healthcare. Thinking they could sway Democrats to support a CR that has some pretty egregious provisions, House Republicans added a six year extension to CHIP. Now they GOP rally cry is Democrats hate children but love illegals. That isn’t working either.
So here we are another Congressional Game of Chicken to start the year.
Stay tuned the vote is at 10 PM ET.