Lawmakers are moving forward with a plan to fund the government with a stopgap measure that would potentially extend funding. The question is for exactly how long.
“It sounds like we’re heading towards a pretty clean” continuing resolution, Sen. John Cornyn told reporters on Tuesday. “We don’t really know how long, but the appropriations process seems pretty broken to me.”
Republicans have floated a CR that keeps the government funded through for a month or two beyond the Sept. 30 deadline. But the White House is suggesting a slightly longer time frame: Administration officials sent a list to GOP leaders of funding anomalies they want addressed in a continuing resolution that they suggested could run through Jan. 31.
The White House “actually expressed flexibility on the day. They’re, like everybody else, trying to avoid the shutdown,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole told NOTUS about the request. “There’s a big debate among appropriators that doing that would delay the process, because this place works, deadlines are like alarm clocks around here.”
Cole added that if there needs to be multiple CRs, that’s a better way to address funding: “Maybe a series of shorter things might work.”
Meanwhile, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins told reporters Tuesday that she supports a short-term CR through shortly before Thanksgiving, with the three appropriations bills that the Senate has already passed attached: Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies; Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies; and the Legislative Branch.
“That would give us time to do further bills on the Senate floor and keep the pressure on,” she said.
The House is eyeing Wednesday to move on the measure to form a formal conference for the three Senate-passed appropriations bills.
“I want to get bills all the way to the president’s desk, and it seems to me we’ve got three bills that crossed the Senate floor, and that if we could reach agreement with the House on what those three bills should do, we could attach it to the CR,” Collins said.
To get any deal, Republicans will have to get Democrats on board. Democrats are facing their own struggles over how far to go.
Democrats want health care — specifically, extending the expiring enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act — to be addressed in any stopgap measure, but differ in whether they believe it’s worth risking a shutdown.
The issue of health care led to a debate between House Democrats in a closed-door meeting Tuesday. Rank-and-file Democrats said they want to see the party hold the line on ACA subsidies. They called for leadership to receive assurances from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats not to fold on government funding, two people in the room told NOTUS. The debate was first reported by Punchbowl.
Rep. Brad Schneider, Chair of the New Democrat Coalition, told NOTUS in an interview the discussion behind closed doors was “passionate.”
“The meeting I attended, which seems to be different than the meeting that people are reporting about, is folks were very passionate about the need to stand up to Republicans,” he told NOTUS. “We are united.”
Later Tuesday, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar stopped short of saying Democrats would force a shutdown over extending the ACA subsidies, but acknowledged it would be their main issue.
“We see this being a fight over values. We see this being a fight over the Republican assault on health care,” Aguilar said, later adding: “If Republicans are willing to meet us, then we will do that. But what they have done, all we can do, is judge them by where they’ve been, and where they have been is focusing strictly on partisan bills that assault health care.”