Moments ago the Senat passed the debt ceiling/government funding/hurricane aid deal, cobbled between Trump and the Democrats to howls of protest from the GOP, in an 80-17 vote.
As a result, the debt limit will be suspended until December 8 and and fund govt through Dec. 8; it also provides $15.25b in disaster funding for hurricane assistance. A vote in the House is expected tomorrow, where the bill will also pass: it will be interesting which Republicans vote against the Trump/Democratic proposal.
As discussed yesterday and this morning, the deal has faced widespread opposition in the GOP, particularly among conservatives. Though Republicans support helping communities devastated by Hurricane Harvey, many are loath to raise the debt ceiling or fund the government without spending or entitlement reforms. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest GOP caucus in the House with more than 150 members, came out against the deal on Thursday, calling it irresponsible. The RSC’s opposition means the deal might pass the House mainly with Democratic votes — an unusual dynamic with a Republican in the White House.
Meanwhile in the Senate, while few Republican senators were happy with the deal, they thought Trump was within his rights to make it. “I think Senator McConnell said it’s the president’s prerogative to cut a deal if he wants to. And he apparently thought that was advantageous,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican. But Cornyn added he would have preferred to have a longer extension noting that “lifting the debt ceiling is always unpleasant and usually we like to have some offsets or reforms.”
The surprise agreement left GOP leadership with a tough sale to rank-and-file members and an unenviable December schedule, when they’ll need to wrangle together another agreement to avoid a shutdown and raise the debt ceiling for the second time in three months.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) quipped to reporters that, “I guess we’ll address all the issues again in December. It will be a good holiday for you guys, sticking around.”
Trump administration officials touted the agreement as a move to help clear the decks and make room for tax reform, another key GOP agenda item that has been on hold.
Well, for one thing, the next “X-Date”, or tha day when the Treasury runs out of cash and uses up emergency measures, is not December 15 as some still erroneously believe (as explained last night), but sometime in the first quarter, perhaps as far ahead as August, although according to a just released analysts by Goldman, the net debt limit increase will be due March, meaning the US has just bought itself another 6 months before this week’s farce has to be repeated.
Logistics aside, and these are explained below, the question for Democrats is whether the 6 month debt-extension interval falls inside the 6 month extension period on DACA before Congress has to vote on whether or not to keep Dreamers in the US, a political “quid-pro-quo” in exchange for not shutting down the government. Should the debt ceiling negotiation fall outside the DACA term, it would result in another violent breach between Trump and the Democrat leadership.