New shutdown threat

GOP faces new shutdown threat from within

Rank-and-file Republicans are frustrated with the prospect of having to pass yet another short-term government funding bill.

By SARAH FERRIS and SEUNG MIN KIM

Congress is a week away from another government shutdown. And if it happens this time, the blame may lie with Republicans, who are struggling to keep their lawmakers in line.

Republicans have considered a stopgap funding bill that could run one month or possibly deeper into March, according to multiple sources. Discussions have been fluid, however, as House and Senate Republicans gather this week in West Virginia for their annual retreat. The House could vote as soon as Tuesday, two days before funding runs dry.

But many rank-and-file GOP lawmakers who reluctantly backed the last temporary funding bill, including conservatives and defense hawks, are balking at yet another patch.

With Congress now staring down its fifth short-term spending bill since September, frustration is spreading across the House Republican Conference, particularly as negotiations have stalled over raising stiff budget caps and providing relief to so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows is threatening to withhold votes for another funding bill without more concessions on immigration. The North Carolina Republican told reporters this week that members of his hard-line caucus couldn’t vote for the bill until Speaker Paul Ryan makes good on his promise to push a more conservative immigration plan.

“It’s not up to me to get out of it. It’s the speaker’s job to get out of it,” Meadows said Tuesday about the lack of support for the stopgap.

Even if the funding bill clears the House, it would land in a Senate chamber that has made hardly any progress on a fix to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a conflict that fueled the government shutdown earlier this month.

“It’s all about DACA,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas).

A group of the No. 2 leaders from each chamber — Cornyn, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) — are getting nowhere in their immigration discussions.

Meanwhile, a coalition of Senate dealmakers is trying to craft a bare-bones framework that can help launch a floor debate. But they’re downplaying their effort as a Plan B more than anything else.

Immigration also remains a key sticking point in the House. Freedom Caucus leaders are accusing GOP leaders of backing away from their promise to help sell a controversial bill from Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) — a bill that would struggle to pass the lower chamber, let alone the more moderate Senate.

But the frustrations among lawmakers go beyond Dreamers and border security.

Defense hawks are also refusing to commit to another stopgap without a long-term spending agreement. They complain that the Pentagon has now spent more than one-third of the fiscal year under temporary funding, risking harm to service members.

Several Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee are pushing GOP leaders to attach a full year of defense spending to the next “continuing resolution.” After this month’s politically painful shutdown, they believe Democrats wouldn’t dare vote against it.

“One of the arguments we heard from Senate Democratic leadership last week against the CR was: ‘It hurts the military.’ OK, it doesn’t if you do the defense appropriations bill,” Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) said in an interview Tuesday.

“I don’t think you want to hold up defense spending, particularly if you’re a red-state senator,” Byrne said, noting the pressure on his own senator, Alabama Democrat Doug Jones.

Spending talks have also faltered in recent days.

Negotiators have largely agreed to boost the Pentagon’s budget by about $80 billion each year, as part of a two-year deal. But an agreement on domestic spending levels has eluded them, sources say.

House Democrats say they’ll remain unified in opposition to all stopgap bills until both sets of negotiations — spending caps and immigration — are resolved. That tactic has drawn fire from Republicans, who blame the spending deal holdup on immigration.

“It is really not a good situation for the efficient operation of government programs and for our military in particular that we’re this far into the fiscal year and still lack funding,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key appropriator. “So that is a major concern. But it seems like resolving the immigration issue is going to be necessary in order to resolve the budget issue.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday dismissed complaints from Republicans that immigration is blocking a budget deal.

“The Dreamers are part of the negotiation. But they’re not holding that up,” Pelosi said.

With House Democrats unified in opposition, GOP leaders can afford to lose only a handful of votes on the next spending bill.

Ryan and his deputies have largely avoided floor drama on recent government funding votes, but they’ve been forced into several rounds of last-minute negotiations with Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Committee leaders to win over key votes.

And Republicans in both chambers say they’re out of patience for more stopgap spending bills to buy time for an ever-elusive spending deal.

“We’ve been told that they were close for a month now,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Tuesday. “I think coming up with an amount of money is not very difficult, if they ever actually decide to separate this from the DACA issue.”

Ryan repeated that message to GOP lawmakers at a closed-door meeting Tuesday, where he again said negotiators were closing in on a deal — only to be greeted with frustration by his members.

“We’ve had enough background discussions with the Democrats, it shouldn’t be that hard to cut a caps deal,” Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) vented after that meeting.