President Obama will sign an imperfect bill funding the government in order to avoid a federal shutdown, White House spokesman Josh Earnest predicted on Friday.
If congressional Republicans and Democrats can “sit down together in good faith and broker a compromise,” Earnest said that he is confident that he will be back at the podium telling the White House press corps that “this piece of legislation is not perfect but the president will sign it because he knows it’s good for the economy,” he said.
“That’s what we’re looking for here. We’re not looking for the perfect piece of legislation,” Earnest said.
Obama’s yardstick for an acceptable catch-all appropriations bill is that it averts a government shutdown, appropriately funds national security, and does not “short-change” spending on programs that help the middle class, Earnest said.
The “devil will be in the details,” and the White House and congressional Republicans “will have disagreements,” he said. But if legislators follow those principles, “a budget agreement should be achievable,” he said.
Earnest also predicted that Congress would not act until the 11th hour.
“I think that is typical of Congress that they’re going to wait to the very last minute before they make a decision,” he said. “So I will not be surprised if we’re a day or two before the deadline and we’re still waiting on Congress to pass legislation to at least prevent a shutdown.”
However, the president is “willing to go along with essentially a short-term [continuing resolution] to give members of Congress time to negotiate a budget agreement,” he said. But a long-term deal requires Republicans “to actually sit down at the negotiating table with Democrats [and] that’s something they’ve been unwilling to do so far,” Earnest said.
