House Passes 2-Week Spending Bill to Avoid Shutdown This Week

The ceiling on federal borrowing was suspended in September but snaps back into place on Friday. The Treasury Department has about $250 billion worth of extraordinary measures available to extend the deadline, plus about $80 billion in cash. The Congressional Budget Office has said the Treasury can use those measures through late March or early April.

Ahead of the White House meeting, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats are working in “good faith” toward a year-end deal that meets some of their priorities, including equal boosts in funding for non-defense and defense programs and a measure protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Democrats boycotted a similar gathering last week after Trump tweeted that he didn’t see a deal as being possible. Trump said earlier this week that a government shutdown “could happen” because of Democratic demands.

‘On His Shoulders’

Schumer denied that Democrats are eager to force a confrontation.

“If a shutdown happens as the president seemed to be rooting for earlier in his tweet this year, it will fall on his shoulders,” he said on the Senate floor Thursday. “His party controls the Senate, the House and the presidency. Nobody here wants a shutdown. We Democrats are not interested in one.”

Republicans and Democrats have discussed a potential two-year budget deal raising spending by about $200 billion. A key issue has been whether the $549 billion defense spending cap would be raised by a larger amount than the $516 billion non-defense cap.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus is pushing Ryan to try to force Democrats to accept higher military funding without any increase in domestic funding. It wants to attach the full-year 2018 defense spending bill to the stopgap spending bill that would keep the rest of the government open only until January. The defense measure, H.R. 3219, would give the Defense Department $584.2 billion in discretionary funding and $73.9 billion in war funding — more than the current $522 billion cap for the Pentagon alone.

“Until we get those assurances, we are just kicking a can down the road,” said Republican Representative Andy Biggs, a member of the Freedom Caucus.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker said GOP lawmakers agreed to go along with a two-week bill after Ryan promised to push Democrats to pass the defense spending bill separately and to keep immigration and payments to Obamacare insurers out of the next stopgap.

Walker said Ryan also committed to seek to include disaster relief spending in the Dec. 22 spending bill, as well as an effort to cut $190 billion in entitlement spending over 10 years through “some kind of work requirement for capable-bodied adults with no dependents.” Ryan declined to comment when asked by reporters about the GOP negotiating position.