Can the House and Senate Reach Agreement on the Border to Avert a Shutdown?

The U.S. federal government will shut down on October 1, leaving millions of workers without pay and benefit services upended, unless the divided Congress can reach an agreement on future spending.

With two days to go until that date, passing all 12 fiscal year 2024 spending bills is unlikely, leaving a short-term deal to continue funding the government at current levels, called a "continuing resolution" (CR), as the most likely option.

House Republicans, who have struggled to reach consensus on future spending, are now saying that provisions to address the waves of migration at the U.S.-Mexico must be part of a future CR deal. However, the bill containing those provisions that conservatives are advocating for passed the House with zero Democratic support, leaving it unlikely to pass the blue Senate.

Additionally, the most conservative House Republicans have refused to allow funding for the Ukraine war to be part of the deal, something a bipartisan majority of Senators had agreed upon. With the two chambers far apart, the question looming over Capitol Hill is whether an agreement can be reached to fund the government and address the border.

"I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen," Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key swing vote, told Newsweek. "The border has to be secure. There's no conversation unless we all agree to secure the border."

Other key Democratic moderates and dealmakers offered cautious optimism that the Senate could put together a CR with border funding as a response to whatever version of such a bill may make its way through the House.

"On the Homeland Security Committee, we have a number of border protection bills that could possibly correlate," Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who chairs that committee, told Newsweek. "The negotiations are ongoing right now."

In May, Peters teamed with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second highest ranking Democrat, to bring forward border security and immigration legislation that received the support of 12 other Democratic-aligned senators.

Another Democrat who's also been working closely on the issue, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, also expressed cautious optimism that the Senate could "potentially" work out a deal.

"The border is often, as it is today, a crisis, and border patrol and the organizations that support them, the NGOs that help manage this, could use more resources," he told Newsweek, adding the caveat that a partisan bill like the House's previous proposal "would not do very well."

Kelly was part of a bipartisan delegation that traveled to the border in January with Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Kelly's Arizona partner, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an independent.

Politico reported that Sinema, who has been working alongside Tillis to address issues facing the border all year, is working alongside Republicans to forge a $6 billion border security deal that will garner bipartisan support and potentially pass the House.

Tillis spoke with reporters about the state of the potential deal on Thursday, saying if the Senate can't put something together by the end of today or Saturday, he's not sure the effort will come to fruition. He stressed that he doesn't want the deal to just be about messaging, and he intends for any vote on a border amendment to receive bipartisan support and pass.

"I would oppose anything where we don't have assurances in the beginning that we have Democrat support," Tillis said. "There are some Democrats who are concerned with [a border deal], but there's an increasing number that I've spoken with that understand they've got an immigration problem, they've got a political problem, and this may be a reasonable fix."