Two bills aiming to reopen the government amid the longest shutdown on record fell short in the Senate Thursday. A bill crafted after President Trump’s proposal to fund the border wall in exchange for temporary protections for Dreamers and foreign disaster victims failed in the Senate Thursday, as did a Democratic bill that would have temporarily funded and reopened the government.
The president’s immigration proposal failed 50-47, and Democrats’ continuing resolution to fund shuttered agencies failed 52-44. That means the Democratic proposal received more support than Mr. Trump’s proposal in a Republican-controlled Senate. Either measure needed 60 votes to pass.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the only Democrat to vote for the president’s proposal, while Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas voted against it. The president’s proposal offered $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall in exchange for temporary protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients.
A handful of Republicans crossed party lines to vote for the Democratic funding bill — Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Sen. Johnny Isaakson of Georgia.
It’s unclear what Mr. Trump, who says he won’t give a State of the Union address until the shutdown ends, will do next. The president has been insisting on funding his border wall before opening up government.
Roughly 800,000 federal workers are going unpaid during the longest shutdown on record. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sparked backlash when he told CBNC Thursday morning he doesn’t understand why federal workers would need to visit food banks, as they could just take out loans instead.
“Well, I know they are and I don’t really quite understand why,” Ross told CNBC, on federal workers at food banks. “Because, as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from a bank or a credit union are in effect federally guaranteed. So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it and we’ve seen a number of ads from financial institutions doing that.”
