Shutdown odds nil, McConnell seeks to assure

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted that the government would remain open past this week, a day after House Republicans announced a plan for a two-week extension of federal funding ahead of a Friday deadline to avoid a shutdown.

"Look, there's not going to be a government shutdown," McConnell said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "It's just not going to happen."

The House legislation would push the next funding deadline to the Friday before Christmas, giving House and Senate lawmakers time to knit together their respective tax-cutting bills into a single piece of legislation to present to President Donald Trump.

Republicans have bet that putting all their energy into a legislative win on tax cuts will persuade enough of their own members to pass the two-week funding extension.

On Sunday, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney was equivocal about shutdown prospects but said he didn't think it would happen even with a "broken" system of spending.

"It's funny to see now that the Republicans are in charge, I think there's a group of right-wingers in the House who say they want to shut the government down. There's a group of Democrats who want to shut the government down over DACA. And there's a group of lawmakers from some of the hurricane states who want to shut the government down until they get what they want," he said.

"This just sheds light on the fact that the appropriations, the spending system, is broken when any little group can sort of hold the government hostage. We need to get beyond that," Mulvaney added.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Saturday, "Continuing funding for federal operations is critical to our nation's stability, our economy, and for the well-being of the American people."

"It is a necessary step to ensure the programs and services that all Americans rely on are maintained and available to all," Frelinghuysen said.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said Friday that the leadership team planned to press rank-and-file members to vote for a funding extension without any extraneous provisions that could cause delays. A handful of conservatives, including Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio, had said earlier that they wouldn't vote for such a plan.

The short-term spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, would still need support from some Democrats in the Senate, where 60 votes will be required to advance the measure and Republicans have only 52 members. But being able to get it through the House by relying just on the Republican majority removes some Democratic leverage to press for it to include other issues.

TAX BILL KEY

The Friday deadline was set in September when Trump agreed with Democratic leaders to fund the government and suspend the debt limit for three months. Republicans usually need a bipartisan agreement on stopgap measures, even in the House where they have a solid majority, because many conservatives strongly oppose short-term solutions that leave the military operating under previous funding levels.

The House passed its version of the tax legislation in November, and the Senate wrapped up its measure early Saturday. A conference committee, which could begin meeting in days, will reconcile the two versions into a final bill that must be passed by both chambers before heading to Trump for his signature.

The strategy for the funding measure grew in part from the complicated coalition that Republican leaders have to build for their tax overhaul.

As part of the negotiation to get moderate Republican senators such as Susan Collins of Maine to support the tax bill, McConnell promised that a bipartisan proposal to stabilize health insurance markets would be attached to must-pass legislation -- like a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown -- before the end of the year. Collins made the demand because the Senate tax bill would end the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandate that individuals have health coverage, which is forecast to make insurance premiums rise.

McConnell reiterated Sunday on This Week that he's committed to offering measures dealing with the insurance markets on one of the year-end bills.

The leading health proposal, from Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, is unpopular in the House, and Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said as recently as November that he doesn't support it. Attaching the bipartisan health care bill to a stopgap spending bill would risk angering conservatives.

By creating another spending-bill deadline for Dec. 22, Senate leadership can still try to fulfill its promises to moderates by attaching the Alexander-Murray legislation to a must-pass bill before the end of the year -- and hope by then that the tax overhaul is already on the president's desk.

The proposal from House GOP leaders also contains a short-term fix to prevent several states from running out of money to operate a popular program that provides health care to children from low-income families. The Children's Health Insurance Program's authorization ran out Oct. 1, and states have been using carryover funding since then.

DACA DEMANDS

McConnell insisted that the GOP-controlled Congress will be able to keep the government running, calling a demand for action by year's end on a program protecting young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children "ridiculous."

President Donald Trump earlier this year ended the program implemented under President Barack Obama -- known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA -- and gave Congress until March to come up with a fix.

"I don't think the Democrats would be very smart to say they want to shut down the government over a nonemergency that we can address anytime between now and March," McConnell said. "There is no crisis."

But some Republicans, including Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, also demand a solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program before the end of the year.

Curbelo said he would vote for a short-term spending bill that lasts until Dec. 22, but "I would not support funding the government beyond Dec. 31 unless we have a solution for DACA," he said Friday.

Also, appropriators probably won't have time to finish their package of actual spending bills before Dec. 22, because Republican and Democratic leaders still haven't agreed on top-line spending levels.

Under the law, the defense spending cap is to drop to $549 billion in 2018 from $551 billion in 2017, while nondefense spending is to drop to $516 billion from $518 billion. Some Republicans want a large boost to the defense cap, and Democrats have demanded an equal size increase to nondefense spending in return. Even once the caps are agreed upon, hundreds of line items and policy provisions in the final spending bill need to be hammered out.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York didn't attend a White House meeting Tuesday to discuss the spending caps because Trump tweeted that morning that he didn't think a deal would be possible.

That means the legislation to avert a government shutdown after Dec. 22 will probably have to be another stopgap measure lasting until at least sometime in January, aides said. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said House leaders recognized that possibility in their Friday morning meeting.

Congress won't have to decide this month how to raise or suspend the federal debt limit, which was a part of the September deal, because the Treasury can use so-called extraordinary measures to avoid defaulting on its debt obligations. These steps, such as suspending some government investments, could push that deadline back until sometime in late March or early April, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Still, even with Republican unity on the tax overhaul buying some goodwill, there are Republican House members who resent being forced to perform the most basic function of Congress -- funding the government -- via a series of short-term crisis-avoidance bills.

Jordan, a founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Friday that he'd vote against a two-week measure to avoid a government shutdown, and he'll consult the other members of his group to check on their support.

Perry, another Freedom Caucus member, said he has a "whole host of concerns" about the strategy to fund the government for just two weeks.

He said such short-term solutions, often presented at the last moment, are bad for the military and give Democrats more ways to make policy demands.

"I don't know if it's a failure of leadership," Perry said. "But it seems to me to be a failure of vision."

Information for this article was contributed by Anna Edgerton and Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News; and by Hope Yen of The Associated Press.

A Section on 12/04/2017

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