Congress Hunts The Rarest Beast: Bipartisan Election-Year Deals

WASHINGTON ― Congress is striving to accomplish what rarely gets done in an election year: three separate bipartisan agreements on taxes, spending and immigration policy.

Landing even one deal would be considered a win before lawmakers depart for the campaign trail this summer, when partisan presidential politics kicks into high gear and action on Capitol Hill hits a standstill.

House and Senate leaders have made some progress on agreeing to top-line spending levels for the fiscal year, but they’ve yet to finalize important details and pass a bill. The appropriations process remains a huge mess, and all Congress has been able to do is pass short-term measures averting a government shutdown.

Meanwhile, a Senate group led by Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) has pursued an even more challenging bargain pairing immigration reform and tougher border policies with military aid to Israel and Ukraine.

The unfinished deal has been subject to a barrage of criticism from conservatives, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who, like his predecessor as speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is facing a far-right faction within his narrow GOP majority that isn’t happy with making any concessions to Democrats, even if they have support from Senate Republicans.

Already, some House Republicans are urging their Senate counterparts not to agree to any border deal with President Joe Biden because the incredibly hard task of reforming the nation’s immigration laws will somehow get easier for Republicans if Donald Trump becomes president again.

“To those who think that if President Trump wins, which I hope he does, that we can get a better deal — you won’t,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told