Politics

House Passes Short-Term Spending Bill, Legislation Faces Uphill Battle In Senate

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Juliegrace Brufke Capitol Hill Reporter
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The House passed a continuing resolution (CR) along party lines Thursday after GOP leadership struck a last-minute deal with the House Freedom Caucus ensuring they had the votes.

Following a meeting between House Speaker Paul Ryan, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio — one of the most vocal voices in the HFC — Meadows announced leadership’s assurance the House will vote on a Department of Defense funding bill within the next 10 legislative days and whip the votes on a Republican-led immigration bill. That was enough to sway the conservative group of congressmen to sign on to the CR.

Following the vote House GOP leadership called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass the measure

“Sen. Schumer, do not shut down the federal government. Do not jeopardize funding for our military and for our national security. Do not jeopardize funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Thursday evening. “It is risky. It is reckless. And it is wrong.”

The House-passed CR is all but dead on arrival in the Senate with Democrats threatening to withhold their votes until a bipartisan consensus is reached on a permanent legislative fix to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — the Obama-era initiative that extended temporary legal status to foreign nationals who illegally entered the country as minors. Meanwhile, Republicans say Democrats are holding funding for key priorities, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the military, hostage over immigration.

GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Mike Rounds of South Dakota have also come out against the CR.

A path forward on funding the government remains unclear in the Senate, and with the House scheduled to be in recess next week, proposals to pass one to two-day spending bills appear unviable and lack the support of top lawmakers.

The thing [CR] wouldn’t ripe up until 1:00 o’clock Saturday, but they assume that they’re going to negotiate shorter time,” GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa told The Daily Caller. “That’s on the cloture motion, and, you know, if you don’t get cloture you shut the government down. If you get culture then you figure you’ve got enough votes to pass the bill.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have already begun pointing fingers at who would be responsible for a shutdown, with Democrats alleging they had ample time to reach an immigration agreement.

You know we’ve given them three, they’ve gotten three different extensions and they still have not gotten any agreement on how much we’re going to spend for the fiscal year and we’re a third into the fiscal year,” House Minority Whip told TheDC ahead of the House vote. “Totally irresponsible. So if it’s a shutdown it will be because they can’t get the votes. They’ve got the votes, we don’t have the votes.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn has dubbed the potential expiration of funding the “Schumer Shutdown.”

“We don’t need a Cornyn tweeted Thursday.

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