"Bipartisan" Deal Flounders As McConnell Calls For Afternoon Vote

Update 2: The group of senators working on a bipartisan deal are pushing McConnell to reschedule the 12 pm ET vote...

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Update: White House legislative Director Marc Short told Fox Business News that he was "not sure the Senate will have the 60 votes it needs today."

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A "bipartisan" plan to rally votes for Mitch McConnell"s three-week stopgap plan is gaining momentum with more than 20 senators voicing their support for the measure and Mitch McConnell tentatively embracing it as one alternative to reopen the government. But while the whip count still shows that McConnell"s three-week extension doesn"t have the votes to pass, the majority leader is still planning on holding a key vote at noon Monday.

The vote was initially expected to be held early this morning at around 1 am, but was rescheduled late last night. McConnell said if there isn"t a bipartisan deal before Feb. 8, he wouldn"t wait for the White House to sign off before moving an immigration deal to the floor for a vote.

Despite Minority Leader Chuck Schumer"s rejection of the deal, one senior GOP aide involved in the talks told CNN that Republican leaders think they might be able to pick off enough red-state Democrats to pass the stopgap. Senators Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin III have reportedly pressured Schumer to reconsider. All three are facing difficult paths to reelection in states where President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by a sizable margin.

Trump has been accused of complicating negotiations by rejecting Schumer"s opening offer to accept full funding for Trump"s border wall and for the military in exchange for preserving DACA protections. Schumer likened negotiating with Trump to "negotiating with jello."

"Unfortunately, the president and Republicans in Congress are like Abbott and Costello...The congressional leaders tell me to negotiate with President Trump. President Trump tells me to figure it out with congressional leaders," Schumer said.

For his part, Trump has urged Republicans to consider "the nuclear option" - changing Senate rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering the spending bill. But Republicans have largely resisted this, fearing that Democrats could use it to swiftly pass their own agenda if they retake the majority.

Leaving a bipartisan meeting this morning, Manchin told reporters that lawmakers are still at a "stalemate." Democratic senators are set to hold their own meeting at 10:15 am ET.

While speculation about the shutdown"s impact on the US"s creditworthiness has mounted since the shutdown began, none of the US rating houses have threatened to ding the US"s credit rating, like Standard & Poor"s did back in August 2011. Indeed, Moody"s said this morning that, although the shutdown will be credit negative, it likely won"t impact the US"s AAA credit rating.

However, not everybody agrees: Chinese credit rating agency Dagong downgraded US sovereign ratings from A- to BBB+ overnight, citing "deficiencies in US political ecology" and tax cuts that "directly reduce the federal government"s sources of debt repayment" weakening the base of the government"s debt repayment.