With just three days remaining until a government shutdown deadline, House Republicans on Monday night moved forward on a stopgap funding measure that is likely to breeze through the chamber on a party-line vote but will face slim odds in the Senate.
House Republican leaders laid out their game plan to members during an emergency GOP conference meeting Monday night. The continuing resolution/omnibus mash-up (dubbed a “cromnibus” by denizens of Capitol Hill) would keep the government running through March 23, fund community health centers for two years, and would include the rest of the year’s worth of defense funding. Republicans want to bust spending caps adopted as part of the Budget Control Act to supplement defense spending to the tune of $659.2 billion.
Government funding runs out at midnight on Thursday, and Congress is scrambling to avoid another shutdown just weeks after a January spending lapse caused in part by a still-unresolved immigration debate. The short-term funding bill would be Congress’s fifth continuing resolution since the fiscal year started in October.
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s move to include the defense spending bill with the CR won over a number of defense hawks and conservatives who have expressed opposition to previous short-term spending bills. Members of the libertarian-leaning House Freedom Caucus gave their official thumbs-up for the measure after a meeting Monday night, despite concerns about the overall spending number—meaning at least 80 percent of the roughly three dozen lawmakers supported it.
But the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate unchanged.
Delaware Democrat Chris Coons told THE WEEKLY STANDARD on Monday night that while he doesn’t anticipate a government shutdown happening this week, he could not envision Senate Democrats supporting a House-passed “gimmick” that would ensure only a month of domestic spending while simultaneously guaranteeing defense appropriations for the rest of the year. Democrats want a dollar-for-dollar increase in non-defense discretionary spending in return for the GOP’s swelling defense price tag.
“Dead on arrival,” summarized Coons. “I’m confident my caucus would reject that.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs 60 votes to pass the cromnibus in the Senate, where Republicans have a narrow majority of just 51 members. Democrats withheld their support from House Republicans’ CR in January, precipitating a brief government shutdown, because they wanted protections for 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to be incorporated in the must-pass spending bill. McConnell reached an agreement with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to reopen the government after three days by pledging to bring up legislation intended to address the DACA issue, “so long as the government remains open.”
That deal may explain Coons’ skepticism about the odds of a shutdown, even if Senate Democrats shoot down the original House stopgap. But some Democrats could choose to take a firm stance in demanding a DACA replacement again this time.
Little progress has been made to protect Dreamers ahead of the Obama-era program’s March 5 expiration deadline, despite ongoing bipartisan efforts. Democrats are feeling the pressure from immigration advocates, and lawmakers are kicking around the idea of buying more time by simply passing a short-term fix. But such a solution would leave hundreds of thousands of people in limbo. Either way, Senate Democrats are keeping quiet about how they’ll approach the situation.
House Freedom Caucus member Andy Biggs says nobody in Congress wants to relive last month’s shutdown fiasco. The calendar could play a part in deliberations this week; Congressional Democrats are set to depart Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a party retreat in Cambridge, Maryland, featuring Vice President Joe Biden as keynote speaker.
One likely scenario after its passage in the House would be for the Senate to take up the House’s cromnibus, strip Ryan’s consensus-winning defense provisions, and then send the pared-down measure back to the House for approval. House members are expected to take up the bill on Tuesday.
The Senate’s solution could jeopardize the spending bill in the House. How Republicans in that chamber will respond to a stripped CR is unclear, but many are already counting on such a result.
“If history is any indication they’ll probably strip it and send us back another CR,” Florida Republican Dennis Ross told Washington Post’s Erica Werner.
