All the People Congress Is Leaving Behind for Christmas

Updated on December 21 at 1:28 p.m. ET

Congress may be giving the nation a tax cut for Christmas, but it’s leaving the year-end wish lists of huge groups of constituents unfulfilled.

Lawmakers are set to escape Washington later on Thursday after they pass a temporary spending bill more notable for what it lacks than what it contains. Millions of families won’t get a long-term reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which has been overdue for nearly three months. About 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children won’t receive the permanent protection from deportation that Democrats and some Republicans promised would come by the end of the year. And insurers won’t see the renewal of payments aimed at tamping down premiums for people who earn too much to qualify for government subsidies.

Instead, Congress is planning to kick all of those issues to next year rather than press policy fights that could have shut down the federal government over the holidays. With a funding deadline looming after midnight on Friday, the House and Senate will try to pass legislation that keeps the government open for another month. The bill also extends funding for CHIP for another six months while the two parties debate how to pay for a longer-term renewal of the program.

“All we are is rationalizing inaction, kicking this can down the road,” bemoaned Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a Democrat.

Not everyone will be going home empty-handed. Bowing to demands from Republican representatives from Texas and Florida, Congress could still approve an $81 billion relief package for the states and territories affected by the multitude of natural disasters in the last several months—the hurricanes that battered Florida and Puerto Rico, the floods that swamped Houston, and the wildfires still scorching California.

But expectations for a year-end flurry of legislative activity had been much higher. Leaders in both parties and the White House had hoped to strike a bipartisan budget deal that would set spending caps for the next two years. Senator Susan Collins of Maine had demanded passage of two health-care bills to shore up the Affordable Care Act’s insurance market in exchange for her vote to pass the Republican tax bill that did away with the law’s individual mandate. Democrats had promised the Dreamers that they’d use their limited leverage to insist on an extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Trump will end in March. Republicans wanted a full year of funding for the Defense Department to pass alongside a temporary extension for the rest of the government. And the Trump administration had pressed Congress for a long-term extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Those demands all fell away as the tax plan hurtled toward passage and the shutdown deadline drew near. Moments after final passage of the tax bill on Wednesday, Collins conceded that Congress would not adopt the proposals she had demanded to restore cost-sharing payments and a reinsurance program for insurers. She and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said they hoped the bills would be taken up next month alongside a longer-term extension of funding for CHIP and community-health centers.

Senate Democrats capitulated, too. They had the votes to stop any bill that lacked protections for young immigrants, but despite Dreamer protests all week in their offices, they are unlikely to force a shutdown over the issue and will push the fight instead to January. In a bid to alleviate the anger among immigration activists, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona secured a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor next month once a deal is struck.

As part of the interim measure, Republicans will also be daring Democrats to vote against a provision waiving $25 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare triggered by the GOP tax bill. If the bill passes, Trump likely will sign the tax overhaul in the coming days rather than wait for the calendar to turn to 2018 so the cuts don’t take effect right away. But a Republican in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Thursday that he would try to strip the measure from the spending bill if it clears the House.

To a large extent, it was conservatives in the House who rebelled against plans for what they likened to a legislative Christmas tree—a big year-end bill filled with unpalatable compromises on immigration, health care, and spending. But even the stripped-down legislation may be tough to pass. Democrats in the House are withholding their votes in protest over the bill’s lack of protections for Dreamers, forcing Republicans to pass it on their own. But that measure’s success may hinge on approval of the separate disaster-relief package, which will draw opposition from GOP spending hawks because of its $81 billion price tag and lack of offsetting cuts. If the disaster bill fails to pass, Republicans from Texas and Florida could sink the stopgap spending bill.

Trump, who earlier this year was rooting for a government shutdown, urged Republicans to support the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution.

House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, don’t let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2017

The Senate, meanwhile, is stuck waiting for the House to act. After earlier discussing plans to add health care and other measures to the funding bill, the lure of flights home for Christmas once again diminished the chances for a protracted fight between the chambers. “The Senate stands ready to take up an agreement as soon as one originates in the House,” McConnell said Thursday morning.

A final vote is likely by the end of the day, and with that, lawmakers would leave town for the year—the government still open, but their work largely undone.