Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that he will give an immigration bill a vote, but it won’t be attached to a spending deal.
“It is still my view that I will call up a DACA related immigration bill that … the president will sign and that it will not be a part of any overall spending agreement,” McConnell told reporters, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Congress has less than two weeks to meet a Jan. 19 deadline to fund the government and prevent a shutdown.
Democrats have been adamant that a fix for DACA has to be part of any spending deal.
{mosads}But McConnell signaled on Tuesday that immigration and the spending talks are on two separate tracks with two separate deadlines.
Congress has until early March 5 to get a fix for DACA before the program expires.
Trump and a bipartisan group of senators said on Tuesday they had agreed on the parameters of an immigration deal.
But Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) quickly warned that Democrats still want a DACA deal in the Jan. 19 spending bill.
“It must go in a must-pass bill and the only must-pass bill that we see coming down the road between now and March 5 is this bill. So we can continue to believe, insist, that it be in this bill,” he told reporters.
But he declined to say if he would vote against a continuing resolution (CR) if it wasn’t, saying Democrats expect it to be in the bill.
– Updated at 3:15