From American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
"Congress begins while the Federal Government is still in a partial shutdown after the most recent continuing resolution (CR) ran out on December 21. New Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that the House will vote on two appropriations packages today. One would fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through February 8 and maintain $1.3 billion in existing border security funding. The other package would fund the rest of the government agencies currently shut down, including the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Justice (DOJ), for the rest of fiscal year (FY) 2019, which ends on September 30, at levels previously agreed to by House and Senate negotiators. While the bills are likely to pass the House, they are unlikely to pass the Senate or be signed into law by the President because of the lack of more than $5 billion in funding for a southern border wall. Congressional leaders met with the President yesterday, and are scheduled to meet again tomorrow, to try and come to an agreement over ending the shutdown. An immediate, quick solution, however, appears unlikely and the partial shutdown will continue for at least a while longer. As a reminder, FY2019 funding for the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services (HHS) were finalized earlier in 2018, so these agencies and their programs are not directly impacted by the partial shutdown."