Congress Passes Stop-Gap Spending Bill After ‘Schumer Shutdown’ Flunks, Ending Government Shutdown

The House quickly passed a three-week stop-gap spending bill on Monday, ending the “Schumer Shutdown.”

The House passed the short-term spending bill, 266-150. The Senate also passed the spending bill earlier on Monday after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) struck a deal to fund the government through February 8, in exchange for a “commitment” to bring legislation to the Senate floor that will address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) illegal aliens.

Congress will send the stop-gap spending bill to President Donald Trump shortly; pundits expect Trump to quickly sign the bill, ending the government shutdown.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on the House floor on Monday:

The American people never wanted this to happen. Republicans in the Congress did not want this to happen. And we did everything in our power to make sure this didn’t happen. The House passed a clean bill. A bipartisan majority in the Senate voted to pass that clean bill. But Senate Democrats shut it down.

Congressman Lou Barletta (R-PA) said in a statement on Monday:

Senate Democrats displayed a disgraceful level of obstruction during the Schumer Shutdown. Their antics threatened our military readiness and denied American kids the longest extension of CHIP funding in the program’s history.  In exchange for ending their manufactured chaos, they demanded amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants with zero enforcement provisions to prevent the problem from happening in the future.  Now, Senate Democrats have agreed to reopen the government on the basis of talks continuing on DACA, which were already happening in the first place.  The Schumer Shutdown was reckless, dangerous, and showed our nation that Senate Democrats believe illegal immigrants come before American citizens.  These shutdown shenanigans are a disgraceful and irresponsible tantrum by a select few.”

The short-term spending bill also funds the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years, while delaying several Obamacare taxes, such as the “Cadillac” tax, the medical device tax, as well as the Health Insurance tax (HIT).

The Senate approved the motion on Monday afternoon to invoke cloture and end debate, 81-18, with overwhelming support.

One Senate Democrat source told reporters that Democrats were well aware of polling suggesting that Democrats will take the blame for shutting down the government to force a vote on amnesty for illegal immigration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor on Monday, “I think if we learned anything is that a strategy of shutting down the government over the issue of illegal immigration is something that the American people didn’t understand.”