The White House is focused on scoring a “win” by getting enough Republicans on board to pass some sort of Obamacare repeal before Congress adjourns for two weeks. But others in the GOP say lawmakers should be more concerned about the looming deadline that could see the government close.
“It’s kinda important,” Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, said about keeping the government funded beyond April 28. “I hope people can stay focused on keeping the government open, because it is important.
There are a lot of members who are individually talking about it,” continued Stivers, who is a deputy whip. “But it’s not in the collective speak because — you know lots of people drive looking in their rearview mirror and I think we need to look out the windshield as we’re heading forward and what’s next is government funding.”
The government will run out of money four days after Congress returns from its Easter recess unless lawmakers continue funding it at current levels through a continuing resolution or finish funding fiscal 2017 through a multi-spending-bill, omnibus package.
“We’re talking a matter of days before some other really big things come up that have to be addressed,” Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., told the Washington Examiner. “It would have been a lot easier to tackle those things if healthcare was already done; maybe that’s why there’s this sort of late second push to do it this week.
“But from what I’ve heard” in the House chamber and talking to other members, “there’s no guarantee that we’re doing that, which means they don’t have the numbers yet,” said Rooney, who is a member of the whip team.
Many Republicans are worried about incurring voters’ wrath if an all-Republican controlled government cannot keep its doors open.
Many rank-and-file members publicly worry, and some in leadership privately squirm, over the possibility that the House Republican Conference’s most strident wing, the Freedom Caucus, will use the deadline to wrangle legislative concessions from leadership and the White House.
“You know [Sen.] Ted Cruz threatened to shut the government down a few years ago if Obamacare wasn’t repealed with Obama as the president,” Rooney said. “So, we’ve done the craziest stuff you can possibly do” already.
No one knows what Freedom Caucus members are going to do come April 28, one leadership source told the Examiner.
Stivers said it’s too soon to panic.
“The great news of where we are is there are still multiple paths,” he said. “But we need to take one or begin seeing which paths are options, and I know that those conversations are happening and I think they are really important to the American people out there.”
How they keep dispersing Social Security checks and delivering mail and all the other myriad things federal departments do daily is less important to Stivers than making sure there is no disruption.
“I see it as whatever we can get done,” he said. “It will be what we can do and what we can cobble together. If we can get Republicans and Democrats together, I think it will be a CR. If we can do it alone as Republicans, I think it may be an omnibus.”
Rooney said going the CR route would not reflect well upon Republican-led government.
“At least an omnibus has language that we drafted for the present day, whereas a CR just sorta is reflecting the Obama era,” Rooney said. “How ridiculous does that look that we would be passing a budget, or funding of the government, that reflected the last administration when we have Trump because it’s the only thing we can get through?” he asked. “Hopefully that’s not what happens.”
