DREAM Act Portal Forum - View Single Post - Congress faces frantic week with possible DACA shutdown

Michcio07 · 12-03-2017, 05:20 PM

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...-russia-276804

Major Points:

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Following that high-profile debacle, Schumer and McConnell spoke privately on the Senate floor in a bid to get the budget discussions moving again. The White House has also been working to try to reschedule a meeting between Trump and the “Big Four,” as the top congressional leaders from both parties are nicknamed. Such a meeting could happen in the coming days, according to GOP and Democratic aides.

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There have been discussions between Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on a possible DACA deal. Senate insiders said there “other lines of discussion” on DACA as well.

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In the House, Ryan and his leadership team have vowed for weeks to keep DACA and year-end spending negotiations separate — at least publicly. Ryan, however, now is getting squeezed by both ends of his conference, with a group of more than two-dozen moderate Republicans from swing districts siding with Democrats and pushing Ryan to fix DACA by 2018.

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McConnell lashed out at Democrats on Sunday for tying Dreamers to the funding bill. McConnell noted Trump has until March to make any decision on deportations for Dreamers, and he clearly wants to decouple the issue from the budget negotiations.

“That's a ridiculous idea. There is no crisis,” McConnell said on ABC’s “This Week.” "The president has given us until March to address the issue of undocumented children who came into the country… and are in a kind of difficult spot. But there's no emergency.”

McConnell added: “I don't think the Democrats would be very smart to say they want to shut down the government over a non-emergency that we can address anytime between now and March. That's a very untenable position."

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Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney also downplayed the possibility of a shutdown, but he noted that certain blocs of lawmakers could derail a short-term CR.

“You know, it's funny to see now that the Republicans are in charge, I think there's a group of right-wingers in the House who say they want to shut the government down,” Mulvaney said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “There's a group of Democrats who want to shut the government down over DACA. And there's a group of lawmakers from some of the hurricane states who want to shut the government down until they get what they want.”

When he was in the House, Mulvaney supported the 2013 government shutdown, which Republicans forced in hopes of getting Congress to defund Obamacare, and he played a key role in a 2011 crisis in which some conservatives balked at raising the federal debt ceiling.