Senate to take up Trump’s border-immigration plan next week

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Saturday that the Senate will take up President Trump’s plan to tie more than $5 billion for the border wall to temporary legal protections for some undocumented immigrants next week. 

“I intend to move to this legislation this week. With bipartisan cooperation, the Senate can send a bill to the House quickly so that they can take action as well,” McConnell said in a statement. 

Trump is asking for more than $5 billion for border security in exchange for a three-year extension in protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients and some Temporary Protected Status holders. The bill being that will be taken up in the Senate would also fully reopen the federal government.

{mosads} McConnell said Trump’s plan is a “compromise” that includes “priorities from both sides of the aisle.” 

“This bill takes a bipartisan approach to re-opening the closed portions of the federal government. It pairs the border security investment that our nation needs with additional immigration measures that both Democrat and Republican members of Congress believe are necessary,” McConnell said. 

McConnell’s decision to bring up a government funding bill that includes Trump’s border-immigration plan comes after he’s repeatedly blocked House-passed bills that would have reopened the quarter of the government closed by the shutdown but did not include additional border wall funding. 

McConnell, at the time, argued that he would only bring up a bill that had buy-in from both Trump and congressional Democrats. 

“The only way out of this impasse is a bipartisan agreement, and as the Democratic leader and I have both stated here on the floor, only an all-corners, bipartisan agreement will receive a vote here in the Senate,” McConnell said earlier this week.

But his decision to bring up the president’s plan for a Senate vote marks a backing away from that, with Democrats panning Trump’s offer as a “non-starter” before he had publicly pitched it. 

Two aides said on Saturday that Democrats were not consulted by the White House on its new plan to end the partial government shutdown, which is currently in its 29th day. 

“Democrats were hopeful that the President was finally willing to re-open government and proceed with a much-needed discussion to protect the border. … It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and taken together, they are a non-starter,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement released shortly before Trump’s address.