WASHINGTON -- Senate leaders Tuesday reached an agreement to vote this week on two competing proposals to end the partial government shutdown, including President Donald Trump's plan to have Congress pay for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The other proposal, supported by House Democrats, would fund the government through Feb. 8.
The plan for the Senate to consider both proposals Thursday reflects the first bipartisan action on ending the shutdown, which is now in its fifth week.
But analysts say the move by Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Charles Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, is unlikely to resolve the impasse. Either package would need to hit the 60-vote threshold to advance -- a tall order in a Senate where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
Trump's proposed border wall is the key sticking point in his standoff with Democrats. Most Republicans support Trump's insistence that any legislation to reopen the government include money for a wall, and most Democrats are opposed to linking the two issues.
Schumer predicted that Trump's proposal "will be roundly defeated." But the Democratic bill, which already passed in the House, "could break us out of the morass we are in," he said, noting that federal workers are facing the loss of a second paycheck on Friday.
"People are saying, isn't there a way out of this mess? Isn't there a way to relieve the burden on the 800,000 federal workers not getting paid? Isn't there a way to get government services open first and debate what we should do for border security later?" Schumer said on the Senate floor on Tuesday after McConnell announced the votes. "Well, now there's a way."
Republicans, though, downplayed the House stopgap measure and said it would also fail.
"The opportunity to end all this is staring us right in the face," McConnell said Tuesday, calling the president's 1,300-page proposal "a comprehensive and bipartisan offer."
McConnell has been adamant that he'll only take up legislation that Trump will sign.
"The proposal outlined by President Trump that we will consider here in the Senate is the only proposal, the only one currently before us, that can be signed by the president and immediately reopen the government," McConnell said.
The Republican legislation, unveiled Monday night, would provide the $5.7 billion in wall funding that Trump has requested. It also adds $12.7 billion in supplemental funding for regions hit by hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters, and provides about $350 billion for nine Cabinet departments whose budgets are stalled.
It also includes three years of provisional protections for 700,000 of the young people covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as well as about 325,000 migrants mostly from Latin American countries and Haiti who have been living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the provisional protections for people who were brought to the country as children and are now here illegally are inadequate, noting that Trump threatened those protections in 2017 by announcing an end to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
"Open the government. Let's talk," Pelosi said. "The [children of migrants] had their protections. ... The president took it away, and now he is saying, 'I'll give you this back temporarily if you give me a wall permanently.'"
Courts have blocked Trump's effort to end the program, and the Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would take no action on those rulings. If the high court sticks to its normal procedures, the earliest it could rule would be in early 2020.
Because the Supreme Court has seemingly allowed the program to stay in place for at least a year despite Trump's opposition, the president's promise to maintain the program for three years has become less appealing to lawmakers.
MORE PROVISIONS ADDED
A senior White House administration official, who insisted on anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said Tuesday that provisions specifically opposed by Democrats were added to the Republican legislation once it became clear that Democrats were going to vote against the proposal regardless.
Among the provisions, which the official said were included at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security, were increased spending for the detention and removal of migrants, and provisions to bar children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras from claiming asylum inside the United States. The bill would turn them away at the border and require them to seek asylum from their home countries.
The law would also create a new cap of 15,000 on the number of children who could qualify each year for the asylum program, and specify that children claiming asylum must have a U.S.-based guardian to care for them.
Another provision would create a host of new grounds for deeming an asylum claim "frivolous," including if the migrant seeking protection was also trying to obtain work authorization, had used a fraudulent document -- knowingly or unknowingly -- or did not file in a timely way.
The legislation would also double the current $495 fee for young people to apply for protection under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and create new income requirements to qualify. United We Dream, a group that supports young people covered by the program, said that would prevent some people from being able to apply.
Democrats say the changes would make it more difficult for people to seek refuge from persecution and violence in their home countries. Schumer said the proposal was meant to draw Democratic opposition and shift blame away from the president for the shutdown.
"The legislation includes incredibly partisan changes to our asylum system that make it nearly impossible for migrants to claim asylum at our border, a dramatic change in what America has been all about," Schumer said on the Senate floor. "The asylum changes are a poison pill if there ever was one, and show the lack of good faith that the president and now Leader McConnell have."
But McConnell praised the plan in a Senate floor speech Tuesday, saying: "To reject this proposal, Democrats would have to prioritize political combat with the president ahead of federal workers, ahead of DACA recipients, ahead of border security, and ahead of stable and predictable government funding. Is that really a price that Democrats want to pay to prolong this episode, which they say they want to be over and done with?"
The House Democrats' proposal would reopen the government and add $1 billion for border security -- including 75 more immigration judges and infrastructure improvements. It includes no funding for a border wall.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that Democrats are playing "political games" and repeated his claims that the wall is a solution to drugs and crime.
"Without a Wall our Country can never have Border or National Security," Trump tweeted. "With a powerful Wall or Steel Barrier, Crime Rates (and Drugs) will go substantially down all over the U.S. The Dems know this but want to play political games. Must finally be done correctly. No Cave!"
Information for this article was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times; by Andrew Taylor, Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram and Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; and by Erica Werner, John Wagner and Jeff Stein of The Washington Post.
A Section on 01/23/2019