The Hill reports that three Republicans—"Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Mike Rounds (S.D.)"—are hard "NOs" on the House bill to fund the government through the middle of February. According to Axios, Rounds wanted more assurances on military spending and has complained that he's tired of signing continuing resolutions. Graham said he wanted to include a bipartisan compromise on immigration. And Paul is presumably a NO for the same reason he was a NO last time: he doesn't want to add to the debt.
Not every Democrat has come out against the House bill—only 38 have, but that's enough to block it.
According to a spokesperson for Senator Patty Murray, she's "opposed to House bill and hoping Republicans work with Dems to address long-term needs."
Murray adds: "Republicans have had months to come up with solutions for a number of things that affect families across this country, and it’s so frustrating they are trying to punt on this yet again. It’s past time for this Republican Congress to actually work with Democrats and offer a serious bill.”
No word yet from Sen. Maria Cantwell's people, but she didn't vote for the DACA-less spending bill back in December either.
Blue Senators in red states are stupidly hoping to avoid attack ads by not demanding a bill that includes funding for Dreamers, CHIP, and Puerto Rico. Since the House bill includes funding for CHIP but not DACA, according to Politico, Senator Mitch McConnell plans to employ a special rule to keep the session open through the weekend to "try to force Democrats to repeatedly vote against funding for children’s health care money and government spending." Conservative pundits have already been Tweeting that Democratic Senators are choosing immigrant protections over the health of "American children," but that's disingenuous on so many levels I'm already bored thinking about it. The point is they're going to run ads like that against blue Senators in red states anyway, so the blue dogs may as well stand with the side that doesn't want to break up families for the sole purpose of appealing to racists.
There's not even enough votes in the House yet to pass the bill, but if Republicans can find a way to appease the Freedom Caucus then there's a few things that the Senate can do.
They could turn the Graham-Durbin "framework" into a bill and vote on that. The proposal protects Dreamers, but it doesn't allow them to sponsor family members, plus it kills the visa lottery.
They can do something incredibly dumb and whip up a simpler stopgap measure that funds the government for another week or so. Such a measure would allow more time for them to "negotiate." Meanwhile, ICE will continue terrorizing immigrants who were brought to this country as kids and deporting them in the hundreds. And at the end of January, "hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of low-income kids could lose their health insurance" when 16 states run out of CHIP money, CNN reports. But Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn rejected this idea.
Or, you know, Republicans can shut down the government because they're miserable, shameless ogres who believe in nothing. After all, for the last few days these people have cynically been using children's health insurance funding purely for the purposes of political leverage. I have no doubt they'll be comfortable with national parks closing and veterans not getting their paychecks while they attempt to blame the shutdown on the Democrats.
