Votes, this bill will fail. And barring a hail mary, the federal government will begin shutting down at midnight, that is less than two hours away. There is a last minute scramble right now to try to come up with an alternate deal that could keep this government open. But the clock is ticking. Its clicking down to 12 00 a. M. , and where we go from here is really anybodys guess, but we got you, and we have a whole lot of people who can help us get through this, were going to watch it all unfold live right here on cnn tonight with me. Lets get right to Phil Mattingly on capitol hill. Wow here we are phil, weve been talking all week, last night we said it was down to the deadline, you said the next time, when they gavel in, they had 13 hours to dry to come up with something. Doesnt seem like they have so far. Talk to me about these last ditch efforts to avert a Government Shutdown. To put it bluntly, not to bury the lead at all, theres no deal. Right now, everything theyve been trying to
things they would like to see. this will drive up the deficit, pure and simple. granted the tax cut they voted for, that will drive up the deficit as well. this will even more. sure, the freedom caucus is really strong on making sure that we don t pass a budget bill that adds to the deficit and they re going to stay firm on that. with regard to the democrats on this, i don t understand why they re going it die on the daca hill yet again. they should have learned last month that it didn t work for them. they need to separate their immigration policies from this budget bill. appropriations bills should be about appropriations and not policies. i think what if we didn t learn anything else last month, let s focus on a big a nice budget deal that people can agree on and let s deal with immigration. we still have time. we still have until march to worry about daca. i think we need to take one issue at a time and right now it is getting this budget passed before midnight. and that se