Nine days ahead of a possible partial government shutdown, a White House spokesman insisted that President Obama would not sign another short-term continuing resolution, or CR, keeping the government funded when the current CR expires Dec. 11.
“I don’t envision a scenario in which the president signs another CR to give Congress more time to negotiate,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
Obama said he only signed the current law in October to give lawmakers time to work out a long-term budget deal.
“I will not sign another short-sighted spending bill like the one Congress sent me this week,” Obama said Oct. 2. “We purchased ourselves 10 additional weeks; we need to use them effectively.”
Lawmakers “can’t flirt with another shutdown,” he said then.
Earnest did, however, leave open the possibility that Obama would sign a very short continuing resolution of just a few days to allow Congress enough time to complete the process of passing a CR. But his comments indicate the White House has no interest in a longer extension, and instead wants Congress to finish its negotiations on spending over the next week.
Former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, negotiated with Democrats and the White House a two-year budget blueprint before resigning from Congress in late October, but left the details of how to implement it through appropriations fell to his successor, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
House conservatives are insisting on including several policy riders, such as defunding Planned Parenthood and blocking the administration’s plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the U.S. this year, in the catch-all spending bill Congress must pass by Dec. 11 to keep the entire federal government open.
Democrats and the White House oppose including provisions that direct policy changes they oppose as part of the omnibus appropriations package.
