Senate adjourns until 2024 without deal on Ukraine, border security

The Senate wrapped up its work for the year Wednesday without a deal on Ukraine funding or border security, and senators are not scheduled to return to Washington until Jan. 8.

A group of Senate and White House negotiators plan to hold virtual meetings over the Christmas and New Year’s break on an emergency foreign aid package, but Congress isn’t expected to vote on anything until next month.

The Republican-controlled House left town for the Christmas break last week.

The departure of both chambers marks the end of the most unproductive legislative session in the past 30 years, as Congress passed only 27 bills that President Biden signed into law.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blamed the lack of accomplishments on former President Trump’s influence over the Republican-controlled House.

“Under a Republican House majority this year, we saw a year marked by chaos, extremism and paralysis. There’s no question that divided government and MAGA extremism made legislating in 2023 very difficult,” he said in his floor remarks concluding the year.

“For much of the year it was as if Donald Trump himself were running the show over in the House, making it exceedingly hard to get anything done,” he lamented.

Schumer, however, highlighted that he was able to confirm the more than 300 nonpolitical military promotions that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) had held up on the floor for months to protest the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing service members who travel across state lines to obtain abortions.

“It was a very good outcome, one that should not have been necessary, but now that the holds have been lifted and these nominees confirmed, I hope this never happens again,” he said. “No senator should use our military officers and their families as political pawns to push a political agenda.”

Schumer on Tuesday night managed to confirm by unanimous consent the last 11 remaining four-star generals held up by Tuberville.

Schumer on Wednesday urged colleagues not to give up on an emergency foreign aid package with more than $61 billion in military aid for Ukraine, which Republicans are insisting must be paired with major asylum policy and border security reforms.

“Democrats will continue to take these negotiations seriously, and we urge the majority of Republicans on the Senate side who understand this is real and very important to join us in helping get this done, doing it together,” he said.

Schumer and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) issued a joint statement Tuesday evening acknowledging that while “challenging issues remain” in the border security talks, they “are committed to addressing the needs at the southern border and to helping allies and partners confront serious threats in Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.”

Senate negotiators met at the Capitol on Wednesday to make more progress on a potential border security deal and plan to meet “virtually” during the holiday break.

“The main news is that we’re going to meet virtually” on Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, announced. “It means there’s a holiday coming up. Every day we’ve continued to make progress.”

But Murphy cautioned “there are still outstanding issues,” pointing out “there’s a reason why we haven’t done immigration or border reform in 40 years.”

“This is a tightrope, but we’re still on it,” he said.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who has tried to act as a nonpartisan broker between Republicans and Democrats, said the issue of border security is not only politically charged but also a matter of highly complex law.

“That’s why you see us being so thoughtful and careful about finding the right solutions, because a mistake here will matter for many years,” she said.

After passing several major bills and reforms in 2021 and 2022, Congress’s pace of legislative activity plummeted this year under divided control of the Senate and House.

One of the biggest highlights was the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which raised the federal debt limit through the 2024 election and capped federal discretionary spending at $1.59 trillion in 2024 and $1.606 trillion in 2025.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the law would reduce future projected deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

House Republicans, however, are now trying to back away from the spending caps that then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed to with Biden in May, setting up a battle next month between the Senate and House on funding government for the rest of next year.

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