Senate vote to avoid government shutdown turns into standoff over illegal immigration – Washington Examiner

Republican senators are delaying passage of a $467 billion spending bill in part due to a rift over immigration.

Republicans have demanded about eight amendments to the minibus, a group of six spending bills that must be passed by Friday at midnight to avert a government shutdown.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, offered to proceed with four on Friday morning, but Republicans objected to the compromise from the Senate floor.

Of the amendments, there are three main holdups, according to several sources. One, from Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), deals with emission standards, while the other two address immigration, a political flashpoint that threatens President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects in November.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), the senator who objected to Murray’s offer, wants a vote on his bill making assaulting a police officer a deportable offense, while Sen. Bill Hagerty’s (R-TN) would force the census to collect data on noncitizens.

Budd cited the death of a sheriff’s deputy in Wake County, North Carolina, in floor remarks calling for the vote. “It’s real, it’s not a theoretical amendment,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions confirmation hearing for Julie Su to be the labor secretary on Capitol Hill on Thursday, April 20, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has also submitted an amendment that would deny funding to sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though he told the Washington Examiner he is not holding up the minibus over it.

“I’ll let other people,” he said, suggesting that he could bring his up with a request for unanimous consent at a later time. “I know what the inevitability is. I don’t want to see a government shutdown.”

Senate Republicans had signaled they would resist the minibus spending bill. They held a press conference on Wednesday denouncing the $12.7 billion in earmarks tacked on to the legislation.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) submitted an amendment to strip them out completely, though he won a more narrow vote from Murray that, if adopted, would remove $1 million in funding for an environmental justice center in New York City.

It is unlikely that anything Democratic leadership agrees to will be adopted, given Congress has just hours to send the spending bill, which the House passed overwhelmingly on Wednesday, to Biden’s desk. But the amendments give Republicans another opportunity to highlight immigration as polling shows it to be among voters’ top concerns.

The Senate narrowly cleared a procedural vote on Friday afternoon that tees up passage no later than this weekend, but without a time agreement on the amendments, Washington could enter a brief shutdown.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) urged Republicans to deny the 41 votes needed to proceed in a press gaggle held ahead of the vote but fell several short. Fourteen Republicans joined with Democrats to advance the minibus.

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Biden has blamed Republicans for the crisis at the southern border, where illegal crossings continue to overwhelm authorities. In his State of the Union address on Thursday night, he once again cited their refusal to adopt a bipartisan compromise he helped negotiate with Senate leadership.

Meanwhile, Republicans say Biden’s decision to end Trump-era executive actions is what precipitated the crisis.

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