Shutdown looms

Shutdown looms as House GOP scrambles for votes on funding bill

President Donald Trump and congressional leaders from both parties also will meet at the White House in hopes of reaching a broader budget agreement.

By JOHN BRESNAHAN, SARAH FERRIS and RACHAEL BADE

The House is set to vote Thursday on a short-term funding measure to keep the federal government open for another two weeks, even as GOP leaders are still scrambling to round up the votes to pass the measure.

Right now, Speaker Paul Ryan and other House Republican leaders believe they’ll have the votes to pass a “continuing resolution” that funds federal agencies until Dec. 22, but they’re also ready for a floor fight Thursday afternoon, GOP sources said.

President Donald Trump will meet with the “Big Four” congressional leaders — Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — at the White House on Thursday afternoon in a bid to jump-start negotiations over a two-year budget deal.

The shutdown dance comes as Republican leaders and the White House are pushing to finish work on a trillion-dollar-plus tax cut plan being hashed out by House and Senate tax writers. Ryan and McConnell are hoping to buy enough time in the budget talks to complete work on the tax bill, all while mollifying their defense hawks and conservative hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus. And that’s to say nothing of Democratic demands for a deal to help hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who face possible deportation next year, as well as a host of other controversial policy issues.

A budget agreement, which would raise spending levels for both defense and non-defense spending, has eluded Congress and the White House so far, as the two parties are far apart on a number of policy issues, including the overall funding targets. Democrats want parity for any defense and non-defense spending boost, while Republicans want to see the Pentagon get the bulk of any spending increase. Staff-level talks have yielded progress on a number of these areas, yet sources involved in the discussions say it’s now time for the principals — Trump and the party leaders — to find out whether they can reach a compromise.

With government funding running out on Friday, the White House endorsed the two-week spending bill in a statement on Wednesday night, another sign Congress should be able to avoid a shutdown at week's end. Yet the Trump administration reiterated its position that military and national security funding — including a border wall — “must be prioritized” in any broader spending package.

Trump’s public attacks on Democrats led Schumer and Pelosi to cancel a White House meeting last week, but all sides are hoping Thursday's session yields enough progress so that an agreement can be reached by Dec. 22, when government funding would again run out.

“We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement earlier this week. “There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.”

House Republicans say they’re eager to avoid a distraction that might derail tax reform legislation. But they've been struggling to reach a truce among themselves to keep the government running.

Republican defense hawks, led by Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry and Arizona Sen. John McCain, chairmen of the House and Senate defense panels, want to keep the pressure on their own leaders by refusing to agree to longer funding measures, arguing that military needs have been ignored for too long.

The Freedom Caucus, for its part, wants the spending stopgap to go into late December or even January, arguing that a short-term funding package would lead to a bad overall budget deal.

“Currently, there are not enough votes to pass a short-term CR, but progress is being made,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said Thursday morning. The Freedom Caucus has been divided on whether to support the continuing resolution and keep the focus on tax reform, or use its leverage to push House leaders further to the right on spending.

Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other GOP leaders spent much of Wednesday huddling with conservative hard-liners unhappy with the leadership plan to avert a shutdown. McCarthy even brought in McConnell to talk to conservatives at one point. McConnell told House Republicans of the difficulty he faced in pushing for a longer continuing resolution, lawmakers and aides said.

Conservatives are pushing an option that would fund only the Pentagon through October 2018, while funding the rest of the government on a short-term basis. Democrats, though, have blocked such moves in the past, and McConnell told conservatives it wouldn’t work.

House GOP leaders predicted the continuing resolution would pass when it comes up Thursday afternoon, but Democrats are withholding their votes, wondering whether Ryan can come up with the 217 votes on his own.