For Texans, shutdown drama turned on border, children, Dreamers and soldiers

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., heads to the Senate floor as Congress moves closer to the funding deadline to avoid a government shutdown. A showdown on immigration looms in the chamber. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., heads to the Senate floor as Congress moves closer to the funding deadline to avoid a government shutdown. A showdown on immigration looms in the chamber. Photo: Andrew Harnik, STF Photo: Andrew Harnik, STF Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close For Texans, shutdown drama turned on border, children, Dreamers and soldiers 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON – For Texas, home to some 124,000 Dreamers and nearly 800 miles of the Mexican border, the stakes in Friday's government shutdown showdown couldn't have been greater.

In the front lines of the battle over immigration, a slew of lawmakers from the Lone Star State also found themselves in the center of the drama, with Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican leader, serving as a top behind-the-scenes negotiator to avert a shutdown on the first anniversary of the Trump presidency.

But a final 50-49 Senate vote - posted just after midnight — fell short of the 60 needed to extend the government's funding past midnight, precipitating the second shutdown crisis of the past five years.

In the 11th hour, just five Democrats joined in voting for a stop-gap funding measure to keep the government open. Five Republicans voted no.

Moments later, a visibly flustered Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, proposed another stop-gap measure keeping the government open until Feb. 8. "We'll continue to talk," he said.

Democrats said they were open to new talks, even as the White House said it would not negotiate on immigration until the shutdown ends.

"We will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while Democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage over their reckless demands," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

Nevertheless, House members were advised to stay in Washington for possible new votes.

Moments before the climactic Senate vote, President Donald Trump, who had run for office as a consummate deal-maker, acknowledged that that there was no deal to be had.

"Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border," he tweeted. "Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy."

Democrats saw their stand differently.

When the Democrats' top negotiator, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, emerged from a highly anticipated, one-on-one meeting with Trump earlier at the White House, he had no breakthrough to report, only "a good number of disagreements."

According to Cornyn, President Donald Trump turned down the Democratic leaders' request for a four-day extension — until Tuesday — for further talks on immigration.

Cornyn, the Republican whip, immediately bid Schumer to return to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

"No agreement," Cornyn remarked on Twitter. "Work it out with @SpeakerRyan and @SenateMajLdr" – a reference to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Whether any deal remained to be struck in Congress still remained to be seen, with less than 12 hours before the midnight deadline for a government shutdown. It was an outcome both sides said they wanted to avoid.

According to Cornyn, who "implored' Democrats to support a stop-gap funding deal until February 16, the paychecks of about 200,000 federal workers in Texas were hanging in the balance. "Paychecks will cease, and services will be disrupted," he said.

In the final hours of the standoff – a slow-motion game of political chicken – the two sides were hardening their respective positions: Republicans insisting on funding Trump's border wall, and Democrats holding out for a deal to protect young immigrants from deportation.

The deal the Republican leaders offered Democrats in the end would do neither, pushing off negotiations for another month, keeping the lights on in Washington until for another 30 days – simply setting up a new deadline. As sweeteners to liberals, the stop-gap funding measure would extend the popular Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years; for conservatives, it would push back two Obamacare taxes.

Democrats, under pressure from their base to restore the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, balked. With Trump setting a March 5 expiration for the program protecting Dreamers, Democrats were refusing to go along with any more delay in striking a deal on immigration.

Negotiations devolved into a blame game, and Texans were echoing many of the same points as the national leaders in both parties.

The Woodlands Republican Kevin Brady, in a House floor speech on Thursday, chided Democrats for passing on the CHIP and Obamacare tax provisions.

"It's regrettable because these are bipartisan issues, and politics are shutting this government down," said Brady, a close ally of Ryan and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Austin Democrat Lloyd Doggett, a member of Brady's tax-writing committee, pointed the finger back.

"The cause of any government shutdown now will be the same as in the past-Republican intransigence," he said. "If they continue to insist upon an entirely partisan bill that excludes Dreamers, they should not expect Democratic votes. I want the government to remain open for everyone, including our Dreamers."

Amid the logjam came dire warnings for a government stoppage, which would be the first since Republicans forced a shutdown in 2013 in an unsuccessful attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

"Amid all the squabbles and finger-pointing, congressional leaders should be ashamed of their choice to play political games with the fate of 9 million American kids – 400,000 Texas kids – in the Children's Health Insurance Program," said Ann Beeson, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.

Under an earlier deal with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Texas received $135 million to continue the program through February.

Apart from Dreamers and CHIP kids, the people most directly hit by a closure would be the state's large military population, which would mostly stay on duty but receive on paychecks for the duration of any funding lapse.

Social security checks would still go out – because they're not subject to annual appropriations from Congress – but national parks and other tourist sites could be closed unless the White House makes special arrangements.

Facing the uncertainty of which side the voters would blame for a government shutdown, both sides vented their frustration – and calculated the political risks.

After mollifying members of the conservative Freedom Caucus about holding fast on border security and future military spending increases – a sticking point that divided Republicans – the House voted 230 to 197 Thursday night to approve the one-month continuing resolution.

In the end, only 11 conservative Republicans voted against the resolution, none from Texas. Among those voting with the GOP majority was San Antonio Republican Will Hurd, a top Democratic target in a heavily Latino border district in West Texas.

Six Democrats broke with their leaders and voted for the temporary funding measure. Among them was Laredo Democrat Henry Cuellar.

That pushed the showdown into the Senate, where the GOP's narrow 51-49 seat edge was not big enough to pass the funding measure without Democratic support. It takes 60 votes to overcome Senate procedural hurdles, and the votes of at least three conservative Republicans remained in doubt over spending and budget issues.

'Dreamers' showdown

Cornyn has long advocated for GOP outreach to minorities. But he accused the Democrats of using their leverage to hold the entire government "hostage" for Dreamers, with whom he expressed sympathy.

"These 690,000 young men and women are truly, should be, the subject of our compassion," Cornyn said Friday evening on the Senate floor. "But why would we hold 320 million people hostage?"

Cornyn, like other Republicans, argued that there was no emergency and there would still be time to negotiate a resolution to the DACA program. "We have been negotiating in good faith on a solution to the DACA recipients, and we will continue to do so," he said.

But it was clear in the endgame of the shutdown maneuvering that a lack of trust had permeated the talks. Democrats blamed Trump, whose remarks calling some Third World countries "shitholes" in private immigration talks earlier in the week seemed to have poised the well.

Houston Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, an outspoken Trump critic, argued that Republicans, who control the White House and both chambers in Congress, had to take responsibility for any government shutdown.

"This is not a bill," she said of the temporary funding measure in the House, the fourth since September. "It is an affirmation of the inability of the Republicans to govern."

Republicans countered that the onus should fall on Senate Democrats, who had the power to keep the government open.

Rep. Joe Barton, a Republican from Arlington who supports legislation legalizing Dreamers, expressed bewilderment that Democrats would vote against a funding measure that contained nothing that they opposed.

"Where I come from, you vote for what's in the bill," he said, "not what's not in the bill."

But in the end, Democrats rejected the choice between funding the government and a deal-in-the-hand to protect Dreamers. They argued its' a population that has been under the gun since Sept. 5, when Trump declared that Obama did not had the legal authority to protect them unilaterally – kicking the issue over the Congress, where it has remained for five months.

"People who say it's one or the other present a false choice," said El Paso congressman Beto O'Rourke, the Democrats' best hope of unseating Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. "We can do both."