Senate votes to fund the government

Senate votes to pay up

The Senate voted 81-18 on Monday to end the three-day old government shutdown, with Democrats joining Republicans to clear the way for the passage of a short-term spending package that would fund the government through February 8 in exchange for a promise from Republican leaders to address the fate of young, undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

“In a few hours, the government will reopen,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “We have a lot to do.”

Actually, they still need the House to pass the bill and then the president to sign it.

So it could be we really are not there, yet.

The Democrats have accepted today the same deal they rejected Friday, in return for a more vigorous promise from Mitch McConnell to do a DACA debate and vote in the senate by March, accompanied by personal assurances from a lot of Republican senators to help the Democrats get a DACA bill passed, coupled with border security stuff the Democrats are OK with.

None of that, of course, means the fire engine red House will ever accept any DACA bill.

Or that the president would actually sign any such bill, despite his entirely hypocritical blather about "a bill of love" and how much he loves the Dreamers.

And it remains highly unlikely the House or the president would buy any immigration overhaul bill that could get past a Democrat filibuster in the senate.

Why not?

Do you hear those chants of "No amnesty!" in the background?

And bear in mind that The Duce has never actually backed off deporting the 11 million illegals who are not covered by DACA, which would protect only some 800 thousand people brought here illegally as children.

Anyway, McConnell and the others had already made such promises and assurances on Friday.

Formally, to avoid too great offense to their base, the Dems still filibustered, but lots of them voted with the Republicans to overcome the filibuster.

There is already talk of the disappointed Democratic base mumbling about trying to unseat Democratic senators who voted with the GOP today to reopen the government in primaries.

And they needed to do this because though the country supports DACA it also prioritized keeping the government open, saw this as a Schumer shutdown, and didn't like it at all.