Although Congress has until Friday to pass a funding Bill. It’s not going to happen for a variety of reasons. There is still hope that they will pass a continuing resolution and keep the government open for a few more weeks while they then do this all over again.

The House Republicans are pushing (and will pass) a Temporary Funding Bill which does nothing to address DACA, the program which Trump ended and gave Congress six-months to come up with a legislative solution. Despite all the claims from Republicans they want to support the Dreamers. Many of them don’t because they want the Dreamers to go home and that’s reflected in the bill they’ve proposed. If this funding bill passes, there will be no incentive for Republicans to get a DACA deal done and the program will end.

There could have been a DACA deal, a bipartisan group of Senators came up with a deal that met the four criteria Trump said he wanted and agreed he would sign. When the bill was presented to him, Gen. Kelly, Stephen Miller and hard-line Congressmen and Senators convinced Trump to torpedo the deal which is why there will be no temporary funding bill. Trump sabotaged it.

Part of the House bill proposed includes extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years which pretty much everyone agrees needs to be done although Democrats were pushing for a ten-year extension. The truth is, that extension could have and should have been taken care of back in September but Republicans refused to address it, saving it for a time such as this to pigeonhole Democrats. Trump, not actually understanding the CHIP funding, tweeted against inclusion into the funding continuation, later somebody must have bitch-slapped him and he then gave his support.

While Democrats don’t want to be blamed for shutting down the government. Their base is demanding they don’t choke on DACA as they have done at least twice previously. They promised they, “wouldn’t go home for Christmas without a deal” and let other occasions go by when they could have stood up for the Dreamers.

While the House will pass their version (kicking Dreamers to the curb). The Senate needs sixty votes to pass something meaning they need several Democrats. Mitch McConnell says he trying to figure out exactly what Trump would sign to keep everyone from spinning their wheels. Some Republicans including Lindsey Graham say they’ll vote no. His vote is about DACA but he’s claiming it’s about military funding which does suffer under a continuing resolution as opposed to actually passing a budget. The resolution locks spending in at previous levels and also makes them susceptible to mandatory cuts.

There will be multiple points in the next couple days where this could be avoided. Because most of them involve Republican concessions of Democrats totally caving they will likely fail. The biggest stumbling block is the man who has to sign the bill who is now saying things like, “no wall, no bill” because his own Chief-of-Staff called him “uninformed.” I haven’t agreed much with Gen. Kelly lately but even he gets it right now and then.

Once there is a shutdown. Despite Trump and Republicans attempts to blame Democrats. They will bear the responsibility of finding a fix and the pressure will keep building on them. Things will be made worse for them by stupid tweets from Trump which will turn any undecided on the issue against Trump. If the Democrats don’t fold (as they have far too many times). DACA will get done, CHIP will be extended, and life will go on.