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In a compromise, Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer
(D., N.Y.) brought up two rival amendments related to preserving the Title 42 immigration rule, after Sen.
Mike Lee
(R., Utah) insisted on a vote for his bill as a condition for moving ahead. Both the Lee amendment and one from Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema
(I., Ariz.) and Sen.
Jon Tester
(D., Mont.) failed.
In all, there were more than a dozen planned amendments the Senate was moving through, including votes aimed at stopping discrimination against pregnant workers, eliminating earmarks tagged for specific projects in members’ home states or districts and other legislation aimed at giving Ukraine funds from forfeited property.
Once the omnibus passes the Senate, it will be sent to the House, which is expected to take it up quickly. House Speaker
(D., Calif.) said the goal was to pass the legislation Thursday evening.
Senators had been trying to reach an agreement on the terms for cutting off debate and proceeding to a vote on the government funding bill for fiscal 2023. The bill, which would keep the government funded beyond Dec. 23, also carries $45 billion in aid for Ukraine and NATO allies, and would finance big increases in military and domestic spending, including military pay raises.
The holdup in negotiations had centered on Republican efforts to get an amendment vote on maintaining Title 42, the pandemic-era public-health measure allowing migrants to be expelled back to Mexico after crossing the U.S. border illegally. The policy was set to end this week but has been kept in place temporarily by the Supreme Court.
“It’s pathetic Congress once again stands here at the 11th hour,” said Ms. Sinema. “Stop using the border as a political tool…We must fund the government and we must solve the border crisis,” she said.
An amendment proposed by Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) failed.
Photo:
Mariam Zuhaib/Associated Press
Ms. Sinema’s amendment only pulled in 10 yes votes, most of them from Democratic senators representing competitive states, including Arizona, West Virginia and Montana. Mr. Lee had called the Sinema amendment a sham meant to give cover to Democrats who wanted to look tough on the border. His own amendment also failed, with 47 in favor and 50 against.
The Sinema-Tester legislation resembled parts of an immigration compromise she has been working on with Republican Sen.
Thom Tillis
of North Carolina. It would extend Title 42 until a different plan to manage the border is in place, and added funding for processing centers, border barriers and detention space.
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Offering both Title-42-related amendments allowed the opportunity for lawmakers in each party to vote for the legislation they preferred. Senate Democratic leadership had been concerned that without a second border option, some centrist Democrats would join with Republicans to pass Mr. Lee’s amendment. If it had passed, Democrats were concerned that it would cause the overall omnibus bill to fail once it was sent to the House.
The Title 42 policy, first rolled out by the Trump administration as Covid-19 was starting to spread, is believed to have acted as a deterrent for some migrants seeking asylum because they could be turned back even if they asked for protection in the U.S.
Most border analysts expect lifting the policy will lead to at least a temporary spike in illegal border crossings. In anticipation of the policy’s expiration, which had been set for Wednesday, some border cities were seeing surges. In El Paso, Texas, migrants primarily from Nicaragua slept on the streets in near-freezing temperatures because bus or plane tickets to leave the city were booked up.
On Tuesday, congressional appropriators unveiled the wide-ranging spending bill for fiscal 2023 with sharp increases in military and domestic funding, with the aim to get it passed before the deadline and to go home before Christmas.
The bipartisan legislation cleared its first procedural hurdle on Tuesday, with a 70-25 vote to proceed to the bill. The bill needs 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles in the Senate and a simple majority to pass. However, all senators must agree to give back debate time to hurry the process along.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent leading migrants who crossed into the U.S. from Mexico to a van in El Paso, Texas.
Photo:
allison dinner/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The spending package drew objections from some Republicans in the Senate and House who said it was bloated and full of unnecessary spending. Critics said that leadership should have released the bill sooner rather than forcing lawmakers to vote after just days to review it.
“It’s three times the size of the bible,” said Sen.
Rick Scott
(R., Fla.) of the more than 4,000-page spending bill. “It’s Democrats’ spending.”
Some House Republicans had also argued that Republicans should refuse to begin talks on the bill until the next Congress, when the GOP will control the House. But those calls were ignored by Senate negotiators.
The bill includes $858 billion in military spending, $45 billion more than President Biden had requested and up about 10% from $782 billion the prior year. Senate negotiators said it also includes $772.5 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, up almost 6% from $730 billion the prior year. The overall discretionary price tag works out to about $1.65 trillion, compared with $1.5 trillion the prior fiscal year.
The bill also includes changes to the 1887 Electoral Count Act that would make it harder to block the certification of a presidential election, widens a ban on TikTok on government devices, and extends a Dec. 27 deadline for
Boeing Co.
to secure federal safety approvals for two new versions of the 737 MAX airplane.
Legal and political fights have kept the Title 42 policy in place for months longer than the Biden administration intended when it moved to end its use last May. More than a dozen GOP states sued to keep it in place, and a federal judge in Louisiana extended the policy’s use indefinitely on the grounds that the Biden administration didn’t use the proper administrative procedure to end it.
In November, a federal court in Washington ruled in a separate lawsuit that the policy’s use was illegal from the start as it violates federal refugee laws by denying migrants at the border a chance to ask for asylum.
—Natalie Andrews and Lindsay Wise contributed to this article.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com
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