The Senate is poised to remain for a weekend session to resolve a dispute over how long to extend health care for retired coal miners and their widows.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., moved Thursday afternoon to advance a short-term spending bill to keep the government up and running. The dispute could keep the Senate in until next week and threatens a government shutdown.
A stop-gap measure funding the government expires midnight Friday.
Democrats from coal-mining states, including Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have vowed to block the spending bill from coming for a full vote on the Senate floor unless the Senate Republicans agree to a one-year extension of the miners’ healthcare instead of a four-month extension.
Manchin and Brown have said they don’t want to shut down the government in order to extract the concessions for miners and would try to use delaying tactics instead with hope that Republicans could provide a temporary funding extension into next week to allow for the final negotiations.
“Nobody wants to close this government down…but you have to stand for something or you stand for nothing,” Manchin said on the Senate floor Thursday. “…I have never seen anything this callous in my life.”
“We’re all for the middle class, we’re all for the working class – we’re all for that,” he continued. “All of our advertising and our campaigns say that we’re committed to it. Let’s now fulfill it – let’s put up or shut up.”
But Republicans are trying to call their bluff by moving to advance the bill by filing cloture, which requires 60 votes to pass.
It’s unclear whether there are six Democrats Republicans would need to pick up in the cloture vote in order to proceed to a final vote on the broader funding measure.
House Republicans also are trying to keep the pressure on by arguing that they easily passed the funding measure and lawmakers will be out of town in their districts as of Thursday afternoon.
“The House just took its last votes of the year and overwhelmingly passed (326-96) the continuing resolution to fund the government through April 28, 2017,” a spokeswoman to Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said late Thursday afternoon.
“You heard the threats form a couple Senate Democrats to shut down the government over the bill,” she said, underscoring a list of popular items in the bill.
Those items enjoy have broad bipartisan support, including long-sought funding for the water crisis in Flint, Mich.; funds to combat the national opioid epidemic; and a full year of funding for new mental health and medical innovation and the four-month extension of health benefits for miners, which would otherwise expire on Dec. 31.
Manchin, addressing the pressure from House Republicans, said going home early for Christmas is not a good reason to leave coal miners without a longer-term health care extension.
“I’m so sorry that they were inconvenienced and they had to go home for Christmas…that doesn’t play well where I come from. That is not a commitment and that is not public service.”
Susan Ferrechio contributed to this report.
