President Donald Trump split with Republicans in Congress on a key aspect of the party’s short-term government funding measure Thursday morning.
CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018
The Child Health Insurance Program has gone without funding since it expired without congressional action to reauthorize it on September 30. Republicans are including the full, six-year extension of CHIP—not a short-term extension—in their continuing resolution tentatively scheduled for a House vote Thursday night.
While the spending bill is a stopgap measure that would fund the government for only a month, giving lawmakers until February 16 to resolve ongoing negotiations over DACA and budget caps, the CHIP extension included in the CR would apply for six years.
Trump’s tweet called into question his familiarity with GOP policy. The stakes for such a misunderstanding are high, with votes in flux and less than 40 hours to go until a government shutdown, absent the CR’s passage.
“We are just reiterating this is a six-year reauthorization,” House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Trump also appeared to echo the stance of some congressional Democrats, who have called for a separate vote on CHIP funding. Republicans held a press conference Wednesday night urging their Democratic colleagues to support the CR to pass the CHIP reauthorization.
Democrats are facing pressure from immigration activists and party leaders to oppose the stopgap funding bill, because no deal on the fate of 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who came to the United States as children has been made yet. Democrats have helped pass previous CRs that have not included a DACA fix, most recently in late December, when 17 Senate Democrats joined Republicans to approve a short-term funding bill.
Highlighting the divide (or, at least, a lack of communication between congressional GOP leaders and the White House), Trump’s tweet came after a feud last night over the issue between comedian Jimmy Kimmel and Doug Andres, a top aide to Ryan.
As you know, tying CHIP to spending bill is not a clean CHIP vote. It’s a transparent bid to lure Dems away from DACA. The majority, including Republicans, support a path to citizenship and full CHIP funding. Using kids’ lives as bargaining chips is disgusting. So stop it. https://t.co/aAXorJZZS6
— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) January 18, 2018
Andres shot back:
And as you know, tying CHIP to a clean and temporary extension of government funding is a transparent bid to…renew CHIP. https://t.co/w6xKMZsmzo
— Doug Andres (@DougAndres) January 18, 2018
“Democrats are voting against CHIP over a disagreement about what isn’t included in the CR. They have no actual problem with the legislation being voted on,” he added.
House Republicans are attempting to scrounge together enough votes to pass their CR to prevent a government shutdown before funding runs out at midnight on Friday, but opposition from House conservatives and defense hawks in the Senate, such as Sens. Lindsey Graham and Mike Rounds, has made the effort more challenging for leadership.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will need some support from Democrats to keep the government’s lights on, as 60 votes are required for passage. With Graham and Rounds’ defections and Sen. John McCain’s absence due to ongoing cancer treatments in Arizona, McConnell’s hand is even weaker.
The CR is expected to come to a vote Thursday night, and if it passes the House, lawmakers in the Senate will make the final decision over government funding.
