The voices from the heartland sounded the following responses as the clock ran out.
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Democrats, as a condition of supporting a new spending stopgap, demanded a resolution of the uncertain future Trump created for the Dreamers with his DACA order previous year.
Democrats vowed to protect those Dreamers, but Republicans hold another choice bit of leverage: reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as part of a continuing resolution that would fund the government for another month.
At the same time, New Hampshire officials – including the governor himself – said the thousands of kids enrolled in CHIP in the state were safe, even in the absence of an immediate bill to restore funding.
“I think everybody across party lines wants to see our military funded”.
“We’re on the brink of a government shutdown right now, and congress are trying to hammer out some kind of agreement to keep the country open”, he told viewers. As a result, at 12:01 am on January 20, the U.S. government officially shut down!
The CR provides a six-year extension of funding for the CHIP, to include $21.5 billion for FY 2018 and increasing to $25.9 billion by FY 2023.
He accused Republicans of wanting to “use children’s health as leverage”. America is a nation of immigrants, and our diversity is our strength. They are hanging their hats on a DACA solution by creating arbitrary deadlines. Children are always the least in any culture and America is letting them down more and more each day.
“Unfortunately, Senate Democrats prefer to shut down the government because they insist on including DACA in the legislation”, he said.
The approval was part of a short-term funding bill that ends the three-day government shutdown by keeping it funded through February 8. There is no actual logic in portraying votes like those of the Democrats who voted Friday to keep the government open as a betrayal of the Dreamers, or as a trade-off of one group or the other-even if some Democrats themselves saw it that way. That’s true in Iowa and the entire country.
Senate GOP leaders will need roughly 10 Democrats to sign on to the measure to fund the government based on Senate rules requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster and advance.
“I can not see the Democrats voting against the Children’s Health Insurance Program”, said Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama. Critical government functions continued, with uniformed service members, health inspectors and law enforcement officers set to work without pay. Democrats, they reasoned, love government health insurance. Those are the provisions crafted to help a specific district or state and, in the process, get key votes for important bills. This bi-partisan legislation crafted back in 1997 by Republican Sen. In a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on January 5, CBO said changes to health care made in the tax bill would result in lowering the five-year cost of the program from $8.2 billion to $800 million effectively a reduction of 90 percent. The White House on Saturday refused to negotiate on immigration issues until the government reopened. Or perhaps a deal will have been struck by the time you read this.
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For most Americans, getting the hiccups would be more inconvenient than a government shutdown.
