Republicans are scrambling to pass a short-term spending bill to keep the government up and running, just 72 hours before a shutdown deadline.
House Republicans revealed their strategy for the stopgap funding bill during a GOP conference meeting Tuesday night, and they plan to whip support for the measure throughout the day Wednesday.
People familiar with the plan told THE WEEKLY STANDARD the continuing resolution would extend current spending levels through February 16, giving congressional leaders a month to muddle through difficult bipartisan negotiations over immigration and budget caps that have gone unresolved. If a CR is not passed before Friday at midnight, funding for government operations would run out, and a politically perilous government shutdown would follow.
Republicans are hoping to win over members—including potentially some Democrats—by adding the full six-year reauthorization of the Child Health Insurance Program to the CR.
GOP leaders are also trying to draw support from Republicans by including delays for several Obamacare taxes in the bill. The CR would push back the medical device tax, the moratorium on which ended at the end of 2017, and the Cadillac tax, which is supposed to take effect in 2020, by two years, and would suspend the health insurance tax, which levies a hefty sales tax on health insurers and has already taken effect for 2018, for one year starting in 2019.
Those in the room when the plan was unveiled Tuesday night told TWS the response from members was positive overall. But conservative lawmakers of the House Freedom Caucus and defense hawks, who have become increasingly frustrated with stopgap funding measures because they don’t allow for desired boosts in defense spending, could cause problems for GOP leaders who hope to pass the CR in the House without depending on Democratic support to get the bill over the finish line.
Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina told reporters Tuesday night that there is currently not enough support within the Republican Party to pass the CR on a party-line vote, according to HuffPost.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, on the other hand, predicted the CR would be able to pass the House during a press conference Wednesday morning.
“I think cool heads hopefully will prevail on this thing,” he told reporters.
The most recent CR in late December had enough support among House Republicans to pass without help from Democrats, some of whom voted for it nonetheless, and it cruised through the Senate with 17 Democratic votes. Whether or not Republicans who have voiced frustrations with the strategy are actually willing to sink the stopgap spending bill and set off a government shutdown remains to be seen.
If the CR passes the House, Republicans are betting Democrats in the Senate won’t hold up the short-term funding bill. But contention over the fate of almost 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the United States as children has added pressure for Democrats to push for a DACA fix to be included in a must-pass spending bill like the CR, and soon.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor Wednesday morning to decry the stalled DACA talks and condemn the CR approach. He said Democrats would “do everything we can to avoid a shutdown,” but added that if a shutdown does happen, the blame would fall squarely on Republicans.
A bipartisan coalition of senators who have been working on a DACA replacement over the past several weeks plan to introduce their legislative proposal Wednesday, but GOP leadership is playing down the possibility of a vote.
“The ‘Gang of Six’ deal to fix DACA will not get a vote in the House or the Senate because POTUS will not sign it,” Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn of Texas tweeted early Wednesday morning, despite President Donald Trump’s promise last week that he would sign whatever deal Congress could come up with. “Let’s go back to the drawing board and get this done: Border Security, end Diversity Visa Lottery, limit chain migration, and fix DACA.”
In the meantime, Republican leaders will attempt to rally support for the CR within their conference, with less than three days to go before government operations grind to a halt absent its passage.
“Compromise solutions are not out of reach, but for now, Congress needs to keep the government open,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said of ongoing DACA and budget caps negotiations in a floor speech Wednesday morning.
