WASHINGTON
— Senate leaders, facing the implacable Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky,
adjourned the chamber until just after midnight, conceding they could
not prevent at least a short-term government shutdown, which will begin
Friday morning.
Senators
are still expected to vote in favor of a far-reaching budget deal in a
series of votes that will begin around 1 a.m. The House is to follow
before daybreak, though the outcome in that chamber is less certain. If
the House approves the deal, the government would have reopened before
the workday begins.
But
Mr. Paul, a Republican, will have made his point. Angered at the huge
spending increases at the center of the budget deal, the senator delayed
passage for hours with a demand to vote on an amendment that would keep
in place strict caps on spending that the budget agreement would raise.
“The
reason I’m here tonight is to put people on the spot,” Mr. Paul said.
“I want people to feel uncomfortable. I want them to have to answer
people at home who said, ‘How come you were against President Obama’s
deficits and then how come you’re for Republican deficits?’”
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He delivered floor speech after floor speech in which he bemoaned what he saw as out-of-control government spending.
“I think the country’s worth a debate until 3 in the morning, frankly,” he said.
Before
Mr. Paul waged his assault on the budget deal, trouble was already
brewing in the House, where angry opposition from the Republicans’ most
ardent conservative members, coupled with Democratic dissenters dismayed
that the deal did nothing for young undocumented immigrants, was
creating fresh tension as the clock ticked toward midnight.
Representative
Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, told a closed-door
meeting of House Democrats that she would oppose the deal, and said
Democrats would have leverage if they held together to demand a debate
on immigration legislation. But she suggested she would not stand in the
way of lawmakers who wanted to vote their conscience.
The
struggle to push the bill through the House highlighted the divisions
within the Democratic caucus over how hard to push on the issue of
immigration as Congress prepares to turn its focus to that politically
volatile subject.
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The text of the deal,
stretching more than 600 pages, was released late Wednesday night,
revealing provisions large and small that would go far beyond the basic
budget numbers. The accord would raise strict spending caps on domestic
and military spending in this fiscal year and the next one by about $300
billion in total. It would also lift the federal debt limit until March
2019 and includes almost $90 billion in disaster relief in response to
last year’s hurricanes and wildfires.
Critically,
it would also keep the government funded for another six weeks, giving
lawmakers time to put together a long-term spending bill that would
stretch through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The
previous temporary funding measure was set to expire at midnight on
Thursday.
The
deal had been expected to sail through the Senate, and the House had
planned to vote on it later Thursday, until Mr. Paul took his stand.
The
White House Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies
to prepare for a possible lapse in funding, a spokeswoman said Thursday
night. The shutdown would be the second of the year, coming after a
three-day closure last month when the vast majority of Senate Democrats
and a handful of Republicans, including Mr. Paul, blocked a bill that would have kept the government open.
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This time around, Senate leaders from both parties nudged Mr. Paul to stop holding up the vote.
“It’s
his right, of course, to vote against the bill, but I would argue that
it’s time to vote,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and
the majority leader.
His
Democratic counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, echoed the
sentiment. “We’re in risky territory here,” Mr. Schumer warned.
Among the Democratic ranks in the House, the objections were also strenuous, but for reasons very different from Mr. Paul’s.
With
the monthslong budget impasse appearing to be on the cusp of a
resolution, lawmakers were girding for a fight over the fate of young
immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children, known
as Dreamers, as well as President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the
border with Mexico and other possible immigration policy changes.
The
uncertain outlook for immigration legislation, and the disagreements on
the best strategy to move forward, was starkly apparent as Ms. Pelosi commanded the House floor for more than eight hours
on Wednesday in an effort to help the young immigrants. She said she
would oppose the budget deal unless Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin
offered a commitment to hold a vote on legislation in the House that
would address the fate of the Dreamers.
On
Thursday, Ms. Pelosi herself displayed the conflicting pressures on
Democrats. She simultaneously hailed the budget deal while proclaiming
she would vote against it. In a letter to colleagues, she explained her
opposition to the deal, but also nodded to its virtues and held back
from pressuring other Democrats to vote against it.
“I’m pleased with the product,” she told reporters. “I’m not pleased with the process.”
Mr.
Ryan, for his part, stressed his desire to address the fate of the
young immigrants. But he did not offer the kind of open-ended commitment
that might assuage Ms. Pelosi. Instead, he signaled that whatever bill
the House considers would be one that Mr. Trump supports.
“To
anyone who doubts my intention to solve this problem and bring up a
DACA and immigration reform bill, do not,” he told reporters. “We will
bring a solution to the floor, one that the president will sign.”
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The
fate of the Dreamers has been in question since Mr. Trump moved in
September to end the Obama-era program that shields them from
deportation, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
The president gave Congress six months to come up with a solution to
resolve their fate.
In
recent months, Democrats have tried to make use of the leverage they
have in fiscal negotiations, and the issue of immigration played a
central role in last month’s shutdown. But Democrats have struggled to
determine how hard they should push.
In last month’s closure, most Senate Democrats voted to block a bill that would have kept the government open, only to retreat a few days later and agree to end the closure after Mr. McConnell promised a Senate debate on immigration.
This time, House Democrats were clearly split in their calculations about the best way to exert influence over immigration.
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Representative
Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois, demanded that Ms. Pelosi use
her muscle to “stop the Democrats from folding.”
“Anyone
who votes for the Senate budget deal is colluding with this president
and this administration to deport Dreamers,” he said. “It is as simple
as that.”
Democrats
also ran the risk of angering liberal activists who want to see them
take a stand. Ben Wikler, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, said
House Democrats would be making a strategic mistake by voting for the
budget deal.
“If you’re looking at a boulder and you have a choice between a lever or your bare hands, you should use the lever,” he said.
But
Democrats secured important victories in the budget pact, obtaining big
increases in funding for domestic programs. Voting against those wins
to take a stand on DACA — and possibly shutting down the government —
carried its own political risks.
Representative
John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the top Democrat on the House Budget
Committee, noted that the budget deal “meets nearly every one of our
priorities.”
“If Democrats cannot support this kind of compromise, Congress will never function,” he said.
The
spotlight was on House Democrats in part because it became apparent
that Republican leaders most likely lacked the votes to push the budget
deal through the House with only votes from their own party.
A
sizable number of House Republicans are rebelling against the deal
because of its huge increase in spending. The conservative House Freedom
Caucus, which has roughly three dozen members, formally opposed the deal.
“It
was pretty much a smorgasbord of spending and policy that got added to
this,” said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina
and the chairman of the Freedom Caucus. “Normally, people who eat at
smorgasbords all the time are not the healthiest.”
Follow Thomas Kaplan on Twitter: @thomaskaplan.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
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Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the Morning Briefing newsletter.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Senator’s Protest Blocks Vote to Avert a Shutdown. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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