The short-term spending resolution passed the House, but it ground to a halt in the Senate.
The package stalled with just over a day left before the Friday midnight deadline when the federal government will shut down.
Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., voted against the short-term spending resolution on the House floor, with most other Democrats, but it passed 230-197.
The Senate adjourned shortly after 10 p.m., after formally taking up the bill but without taking a procedural vote that would advance it.
The bill lacked the 60 votes necessary to pass in the Senate after most Democrats and a few Republicans vowed to oppose it. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were among those prepared to vote against continuing resolution.
The Senate is expected to resume debate Friday, just hours before the deadline.
Congressional Republican leaders scrambled through the week to rally sufficient support for a temporary measure that would keep the lights on through Feb. 16. The bill also reauthorizes the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, for six years.
Democrats held out support for the short-term resolution over renewal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, that President Donald Trump ended by executive order last year.
In a brief debate on the floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of holding up the package over “illegal immigration” when the final deadline for the DACA program isn’t until March.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the DACA program is a critical program, and gestured to a group of about a dozen young adults who watched from the gallery, holding hands with each other. A few wiped tears from their eyes.
Leahy, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, criticized the package on the Senate.
“The House bill is a joke,” he said.
Earlier in the day, he announced he would not vote on the continuing resolution — a break from his typical practice. He voted in favor of three previous short-term packages Congress passed in September and December.
But he said he would not support the fourth one.
“It leaves too much undone, and it is woefully inadequate,” he said. “If the majority now wants bipartisan support, they should work with Democrats, instead of appealing for our support only after they’ve written a mishmash bill grafted behind closed doors.”
The GOP controls both chambers and the White House, he said. “The government stays open if they want it to stay open, and it shuts down if they want it to shut down.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in an interview in the basement of the Capitol that Republicans can’t keep “kicking the can down the road.”
“We are a multi-trillion dollar organization here,” Sanders said. “You can’t run it month by month.”
Though Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, he said, they need 60 votes to move forward. He called on them to negotiate across the aisle.
In order to win his support, a package would need to have equal spending for defense and non-defense programs, and would need to support Social Security, efforts to combat the opioid crisis and more. Sanders has repeatedly raised concerns over the expiration of funding for community health centers, a program that serves a quarter of Vermont’s population.
Welch also called for bipartisan negotiation on several key issues related to the spending bill.
“I don’t want a shutdown. I want to keep the lights on,” Welch said in an interview Wednesday. “But we need a seat at the table.”
Welch this week co-sponsored a bill with bipartisan that would extend the deferred action for childhood arrivals program, or DACA, which President Donald Trump ended by executive order last year. The bill includes increased border security, as well.
Welch and two other congressmen sent a letter to Trump Thursday signed by 171 Democrats saying that the party will push for a number of issues in any funding resolution, including protection for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children, equal increases for military and non-military spending, and more.
In the letter, the Democrats said argued for bipartisan negotiations on those topics and more.
“If we can’t agree, your party has the majority in the House and the Senate to pass your own funding resolution,” the representatives wrote. “But that will be a bill we cannot support.”
