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Why is this so hard, folks?
There are three things Congress MUST deal with within a few weeks: keeping the lights on, CHIP, and DACA. Keeping the lights on is obvious (at least, to all but a few bomb-throwing drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub Republicans). CHIP: there are states running out of CHIP money this month, which means kids losing health coverage this month. DACA: in about six weeks, hundreds of thousands of kids and young adults become subject to deportation to a country where they may not know anybody and may not speak the language. Fortunately, all three of these "must-do's" enjoy overwhelming, bipartisan popular support, so it should be a no-brainer to pass all three. There will inevitably be tense negotiations over the details, but most of both parties in both houses have every reason to pass something in each of these areas. In an ideal world, they would be three separate bills, each addressing only one subject (neither CHIP nor DACA belongs in a temporary spending resolution), and all three would pass with bipartisan majorities.
But this isn't an ideal world, and the Republican delegation in Congress (especially the House, where gerrymandered safe seats ensure that most Congressbeings of both parties have more to fear from a primary than from a general election) is considerably more right-wing than its voters. So even if 64% of Republicans out in the "real world" support keeping DACA in place, possibly even including a path to citizenship, it's not clear that a majority of House Republicans would do so. However, even a quarter of Republicans, plus essentially all the Democrats, would be enough to pass the bill. The majority for CHIP should be even larger.
So I think the answer right now is to pass a two-or-three-week CR, not mentioning CHIP or DACA, and in the next two weeks, schedule floor votes on both CHIP and DACA, as a prerequisite for a further CR which can be used to actually write spending bills. That requires working fast, but everybody on both sides has known for months that these bills were coming up, so nobody can say they were surprised. (And, of course, if the time is too tight, President Trump could unilaterally extend his self-imposed deadline for DACA, claiming victory because he successfully forced Democrats to the negotiating table.)
Then there's the question of whether the President will sign them. Everybody on both sides knows that the President is a walking pair of dice, so nobody can predict this with confidence, but I'm guessing he wants to be seen signing something that saves hundreds of thousands of sweet, innocent, beautiful children. He might refuse to sign a DACA bill that doesn't fund his big, beautiful, transparent, not-at-all-evolving wall, but that would look bad after bipartisan majorities of both houses have approved it; he can say "we'll deal with the wall next month".
The other obstacle, of course, is the game of chicken, where extremists on each side load their bills with as much stuff unpalatable to the other side as possible, betting that the other side will blink first in order to pass something. It's entirely possible that the extremists on both sides don't blink, and hundreds of thousands of people suffer for the sake of a few Congressbeings' egotistical adrenaline rushes.
But this isn't an ideal world, and the Republican delegation in Congress (especially the House, where gerrymandered safe seats ensure that most Congressbeings of both parties have more to fear from a primary than from a general election) is considerably more right-wing than its voters. So even if 64% of Republicans out in the "real world" support keeping DACA in place, possibly even including a path to citizenship, it's not clear that a majority of House Republicans would do so. However, even a quarter of Republicans, plus essentially all the Democrats, would be enough to pass the bill. The majority for CHIP should be even larger.
So I think the answer right now is to pass a two-or-three-week CR, not mentioning CHIP or DACA, and in the next two weeks, schedule floor votes on both CHIP and DACA, as a prerequisite for a further CR which can be used to actually write spending bills. That requires working fast, but everybody on both sides has known for months that these bills were coming up, so nobody can say they were surprised. (And, of course, if the time is too tight, President Trump could unilaterally extend his self-imposed deadline for DACA, claiming victory because he successfully forced Democrats to the negotiating table.)
Then there's the question of whether the President will sign them. Everybody on both sides knows that the President is a walking pair of dice, so nobody can predict this with confidence, but I'm guessing he wants to be seen signing something that saves hundreds of thousands of sweet, innocent, beautiful children. He might refuse to sign a DACA bill that doesn't fund his big, beautiful, transparent, not-at-all-evolving wall, but that would look bad after bipartisan majorities of both houses have approved it; he can say "we'll deal with the wall next month".
The other obstacle, of course, is the game of chicken, where extremists on each side load their bills with as much stuff unpalatable to the other side as possible, betting that the other side will blink first in order to pass something. It's entirely possible that the extremists on both sides don't blink, and hundreds of thousands of people suffer for the sake of a few Congressbeings' egotistical adrenaline rushes.