With just over thirty-six hours left before the current continuing resolution runs out and the Federal Government runs out of spending authority, it’s still unclear how Republicans will resolve a standoff that includes not just the ordinary spending issues but also drags in the debate over immigration and funding for President Trump’s so-called “border wall.” Yesterday, House Republicans put forward a fairly clean Continuing Resolution that would keep the government funded through mid-February but would avoid dealing with controversial issues such as the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, but it’s not at all clear that this proposal has any chance of passing before midnight on Friday. To begin with, it does not appear that Republicans have enough votes to get the bill through the House of Representatives:
House Republicans are short of the votes they need to avoid a government shutdown, but Speaker Paul Ryan and GOP leaders remain confident they will pass a stopgap funding measure when it comes to the floor on Thursday.
President Donald Trump is personally leaning on GOP lawmakers to fall into line, especially hard-line conservatives who are opposed to virtually anything Ryan and his leadership team propose.
(…)
With government funding set to run out on Friday — and the two sides far apart on an immigration deal — Ryan and senior House Republicans are pushing legislation to keep the government funded until Feb. 16. In a bid to pick up votes from both parties, the measure would also fund a popular children’s health program for six more years and delay the implementation of several Obamacare taxes.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and fellow Democrats have refused to back the plan. Since Republicans are in the majority, they should pass the short-term funding bill — the fourth since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1 — without Democrats’ help, they say.
With Democrats on the sidelines, Republicans spent Wednesday leaning on every member for their vote.
“I think it passes. I don’t think it’s overwhelming, but I think it passes,” Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) said after GOP lawmakers met on Wednesday.
With government funding set to run out on Friday — and the two sides far apart on an immigration deal — Ryan and senior House Republicans are pushing legislation to keep the government funded until Feb. 16. In a bid to pick up votes from both parties, the measure would also fund a popular children’s health program for six more years and delay the implementation of several Obamacare taxes.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and fellow Democrats have refused to back the plan. Since Republicans are in the majority, they should pass the short-term funding bill — the fourth since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1 — without Democrats’ help, they say.
With Democrats on the sidelines, Republicans spent Wednesday leaning on every member for their vote.
“I think it passes. I don’t think it’s overwhelming, but I think it passes,” Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) said after GOP lawmakers met on Wednesday.
Restless conservatives have been asking Ryan and other senior Republicans for concessions to get them to yes, though it’s unclear whether they’ll get them. Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) said he’s holding out for assurances from GOP leaders that they’ll put a conservative Dreamers bill authored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on the floor. But GOP leaders have resisted, fearing a vote would upset bipartisan immigration talks to shield young immigrants from deportation.
Other Freedom Caucus members are pushing to attach a yearlong appropriation for the Pentagon. GOP leaders, however, know that will fail in the Senate, so they aren’t entertaining the idea.
“It’s crisis management at its worst,” Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) complained. “Nobody wants to shut down the government, but if they load this up … they’re going to have a fight on this.”
House Democrats will refuse to bail out GOP leaders if Republicans can’t put up the votes themselves.
“My sense is that everybody’s going to be unified on this. We’re not going to have many defections, if any,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “We have no bargaining power if we don’t stay unified.”
When asked whether Democrats would uniformly vote against the bill, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said, “We’ll see what they’re going to do, but I think that’s probably the case.”
During a news conference on Wednesday, Ryan tried to blame Democrats for any problems passing the funding bill, despite the internal GOP schism.
“Real deadlines are occurring this Friday,” the Wisconsin Republican told reporters. “That is why it is unconscionable to me that they would block funding for our military or cut off funding for these states that really will lose their funding for [children’s health] by playing these political games and tying them to unrelated issues.”
House Republicans had hoped to gain some Democratic votes by attaching policy sweeteners to the bill, including children’s health funding and delay of the Obamacare taxes.
But members of the Congressional Black Caucus, whom Republicans had hoped to win over, say they’re still planning to oppose the proposal.
Many CBC members were livid after Trump called certain African nations “shithole countries” during a meeting with lawmakers at the White House last week. They say the episode strengthened their resolve to withhold votes until Republicans show progress on a bipartisan Dreamers deal.
Children’s health funding “alone is probably not going to change much,” said one CBC member, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), after the group’s weekly meeting Wednesday. “Why would we want to send a message to 800,000 young people” that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “is not important enough to demand action on it in exchange for our support?”
Pelosi implored Democrats to vote against the measure during a caucus meeting Wednesday morning.
“We can’t vote for what they’re putting forth. Not for what’s in it but [for] what’s not in it,” Pelosi told lawmakers, according to an aide in the room. “This is an important moment for our caucus, standing up for what we know is right. … We will not give up our leverage, for our priorities and for our Dreamers.”
Even if the bill managed to pass the House, though, it’s fate in the Senate remains unclear, especially now that the Republican majority has been reduced to just a single seat thanks to the victory of Doug Jones in Alabama’s Special Election last month. In order for the bill to even get to a final vote, Senate Republicans will need to meet the sixty vote threshold necessary to invoke cloture, and it’s not at all clear that they can do that. As things stand, even if the entire Senate GOP Caucus were to stay united, they’d still need the support of at least nine Senate Democrats to invoke cloture. The problem that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell faces is that he doesn’t have a united caucus, and it’s unclear what it might take to make that possible and attract enough Democratic support to get a bill to the floor for a final vote. Senator Lindsey Graham has indicated that he’s inclined to oppose another Continuing Resolution, citing both the lack of any measure to deal the DACA issue and the fact that this would be the fourth Continuing Resolution that Congress has passed since the new Fiscal Year began in October. Additionally, Arizona’s John McCain will apparently be unavailable for a vote for the remainder of this week due to his ongoing treatment for cancer. Additionally, Roll Call is reporting that Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota said that he would vote against the currently proposed Continuing Resolution. That means that Senate Republicans would need the votes of eleven Democrats to surpass the sixty-vote threshold. At the moment at least, that appears to be highly unlikely. Already, a large number of Democrats have said that they would oppose any spending bill that didn’t include a DACA fix and it appears that most of the Democrats in the Senate agree with them. The only hope Republicans would appear to have comes from the handful of Democrats running for re-election in red states or in states that Donald Trump won in 2016, but even if all of those Senators ended up voting with Republicans the GOP would still fall short of the votes they need.
The situation isn’t being helped this morning thanks to yet another tweet storm from the President of the United States, including one that appears to undercut the Continuing Resolution that Speaker Paul Ryan and House Republican leadership hopes to be able to pass later today. As noted above, that bill includes a so-called sweetener in the form of an add-on that would fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for at least the next six years. That program has gone without funding since October, and both Democrats and many Republicans have been calling on Congress to address the issue before the stop-gap measures that the Federal Government and states have taken to keep the program running are out of options. In a tweet this morning, though, Trump said that CHIP funding should be part of a long-term budget rather than included as part of a short-term funding bill that’s largely designed to kick the can down the road. While there’s some merit to that idea, the fact that the President is undercutting his own party’s proposal with so little time left makes it less likely that Republicans will be able to get much cross-party support for their proposal. In separate tweets, Trump said that there should be no budget deal unless it includes funding for his border wall and accused Democrats of not caring about the military since they are willing to risk a shutdown over the DACA issue. This kind of undercutting from the President just makes things more difficult for Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell. Lindsey Graham put it well in remarks to reporters as he arrived on Capitol Hill this morning:
“We don’t have a reliable partner at the White House to negotiate with,” @LindseyGrahamSC said as he walked into the U.S. Capitol and was told of Trump’s morning tweets.
— Ed O’Keefe (@edatpost) January 18, 2018
In the end, I suspect that House Republicans will be able to get a bill passed today even taking into account the controversies surrounding the process and that they will be able to so without substantial Democratic support. Much like the health care reform bill they passed last year, it may come down to a handful of votes but there seem to be enough Republicans who remember the disaster that was the 2013 shutdown and are spooked by the possibility of that happening again, especially in a midterm election year that already looks like it will be problematic for the GOP. What’s harder to see right now is a path forward in the Senate. As I noted above, Republicans need Democratic support to even get a bill to the floor for a vote and it’s unclear at the moment how that happens unless the bill includes a DACA fix. Given that, we have the possibility that the government could shut down on the first anniversary of President Trump’s Inauguration. In some ways, that would be the perfect way to mark what has been a seemingly difficult year for an Administration that doesn’t seem capable of tying its shoes before heading out the door in the morning.
