White House officials reiterated support for a short-term spending deal on Thursday after President Trump appeared to tweet in opposition to a key provision in the bill, sparking confusion about whether the administration backed the stopgap funding legislation.
“The president supports the continuing resolution introduced in the House,” principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah said in a statement on Thursday.
“Congress needs to do its job and provide full funding of our troops and military with a two year budget caps deal,” Shah said. “However, as the deal is negotiated, the president wants to ensure our military and national security are funded. He will not let it be held hostage by Democrats.”
Congress has just two days to pass a funding mechanism that will keep the government open past Friday, when the continuing resolution lawmakers passed just before Christmas will expire. Republican congressional leaders are pushing members to support another continuing resolution — the fourth since the end of the last fiscal year — that will keep the government running through Feb. 16 and fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday that Trump supported the continuing resolution, and White House officials urged Republicans to get on board with the short-term spending deal in order to avert a shutdown.
But Trump temporarily threw the process into chaos Thursday morning when he tweeted his displeasure with the provision of the continuing resolution that funds CHIP, even though including full appropriations for the program is a key part of Republicans’ strategy to get their Democratic counterparts to vote for the short-term deal. The president argued CHIP funding should accompany a long-term spending bill.
GOP leaders quickly attempted to clarify that their bill did indeed provide a long-term solution for CHIP. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, took to Twitter to explain that the deal Republicans have pushed this week funds the children’s health program for much longer than 30 days, as the president may have suspected when he sent his tweet Thursday morning.
