Reports are trickling in that the shutdown is about to end. Democrats seem to have agreed to take the deal on offer: 3-week CR, 6-year CHIP funding, some delays in ACA-related taxes, and a “promise” from Mitch McConnell to bring DACA to the floor after February 8th. (Take it as a given that Mitch McConnell is a liar and that his promise is worth about as much as a rusty nickel. There won’t be a DACA vote by February 8th.)
Judging by the media coverage, this sadly seems understandable. After a few days of blaming Trump for chaos, the narrative had started to coalesce around us being to blame. I’ve seen a lot of griping about NPR and MSNBC coverage, and that’s never a good sign. This was tough terrain for us — it’s always hard to be the party withholding the most votes to implement policy change.
The good news: this is not over. We gave them 3 weeks. The DACA deadline is March 5th. So we have plenty of leverage left, and there are 8 million fewer hostages on the table. It’s on to Round 2.
So: how do we win Round 2?
Here’s an option I like: move the red line. Instead of making it government funding, hit the Republicans where it hurts them: defense spending. If the Republicans don’t agree to DACA, we will not agree to an increase in defense spending. In fact, we won’t agree to any policy change that can’t get 60 votes, whether individual or as part of a broader deal, if DACA isn’t fixed along with it. We’ll take CRs, four weeks at a time, but no policy change at all.
In short: no DACA? No budget.
This forces the Republicans to pick one of a number of poor options:
1) Fund the government with CRs for the rest of the year. Bad news: the Dreamers start becoming vulnerable, roughly 200,000 by election time. Good news: they can’t do any more harm by, say, increasing the ICE budget or doing more interior enforcement (in fact, fewer total people get deported in this option than if they make a DACA-for-interior-enforcement deal). And they don’t get their f***ing wall.
2) Shut the government down themselves in a tantrum about defense spending. In this case they’ll be blamed without question.
3) Give us DACA.
I don’t know which way they’ll jump. But this puts them in a place where they have to make one of three unpopular choices. It’s favorable terrain for us in a way the current skirmish simply wasn’t.