So this morning, President Trump signed into law a budget deal which was struck overnight in Congress, which provides for two years of funding and takes some of the uncertainty that's existed over budgetary matters in recent months out of the equation. Significantly, they've also agreed to suspend the debt limit, which limits the amount the US government can borrow, until next year. So a bit more budgetary certainty now, but also rising deficits as a result.
Well we heard vociferous complaints on the floor of the Senate from Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, fiscal hawk, yesterday, saying that the Republicans were being very inconsistent, even hypocritical, in voting for higher deficits, having spent the past eight years attacking Barack Obama's public borrowing mountain, which continued to swell under him and will continue to swell under Republican leadership as well. We saw hawkish comments from some in the House as well. But those voices were insufficient to derail a budget deal.
One of the commitments that Mitch McConnell gave in the Senate, the Senate leader for the Republican party gave, was to have a debate about the fate of, so-called Dreamers, the children who were brought as undocumented migrants to the United States and whose fate is now uncertain, because they are losing protections under Donald Trump. There will be a debate about that in the Senate, the House. On the House side, Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, has also promised, some say, a commitment to look into this issue and to discuss it. So we do expect a debate on immigration now to begin as soon as next week.
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