House GOP dares Senate to vote against temporary spending bill

WASHINGTON - House Republicans are challenging the Senate with a take-it-or-leave-it offer to keep the government running for another month while increasing funding for the Pentagon. The Senate is ready to leave it.

That means a tight turnaround for both chambers to come to an agreement and vote this week before the federal government's current temporary funding expires at the end of the day on Friday.

Republicans and Democrats are still haggling over whether the funding legislation should be carry a host of other issues including lifting limits on defense and domestic programs, stabilizing Obamacare markets, extending an insurance program for children from low-income families, providing additional aid for hurricane recovery and giving legal status to some immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

The tussle over funding is playing out the same week Republicans are pushing a massive tax bill through final approval without any support from Democrats.

The House is moving ahead with a spare stopgap spending measure that will give the Defense Department a bigger budget for the rest of the fiscal year while funding the rest of the government at current levels through Jan. 19. That would give lawmakers more time to wrestle with tougher questions about how much to spend on domestic programs and deal with contentious policy issues such as immigration.

But members of both parties have said the House plan doesn't have a chance in the Senate, where Republican leaders will need at least eight Democratic votes to move the legislation forward. Democrats plan to use that leverage to seek an increase for nondefense programs while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will try to attach other provisions to make good on deals to secure votes on the Republican tax-cut bill.

'We're going to put together a bill that reflects our priorities and send that over to the Senate after tax reform,” House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said last week. 'We did our work, we passed all 12 appropriation bills before the June 30th deadline. The Senate hasn't passed a single appropriation bill. So there's a bit of frustration here.”

The House bill gives the Defense Department a $664 billion budget through Oct. 1, funds the Children's Health Insurance Program for five years, sets an August deadline for a veterans' health program and extends all other government funding and the National Flood Insurance Program until Jan. 19.

In the House GOP proposal, the Children's Health Insurance Program would be extended with the funding offset by cuts in other federal programs - a move that Democrats say would make it harder for beneficiaries of Medicaid and participants in Obamacare exchanges to get coverage. Democratic members of the House Appropriations Committee said in a statement that funding other government functions on a temporary basis also ignores bipartisan priorities, including intelligence agencies, infrastructure and homeland security.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has dismissed the House proposal as a 'ruse” to give more priority to defense spending over education, the environment and other programs. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said last week that because Democrats want parity between defense and nondefense spending increases in the talks on a broad spending deal, it's all but certain the long-term military spending in the House measure can't get enough support in a Senate narrowly controlled by the GOP.

Cornyn said he'd support funding the full year of defense spending, 'but until there's a deal on the budget caps I doubt the Senate Democrats will let that go, unfortunately.”

'I think it's going to pass the House with ease,” counting on just Republican votes, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said of the House version of the continuing resolution that includes the full defense bill. But Gaetz, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said that if it comes back from the Senate looking fundamentally different - without the defense bill or with Obamacare subsidies - Ryan will need help from Democrats to get through the House a second time.

Republican leaders in the Senate also promised Maine's Susan Collins that they would attach two Obamacare-related items to the measure in exchange for her support for Republicans' $1.5 trillion tax-cut bill. Those are a measure introduced by Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and Washington Democrat Patty Murray that shores up Obamacare's insurance exchanges by making 'cost sharing” payments to insurers who take on sicker patients, and legislation Collins and Florida Democrat Bill Nelson have drafted that would create high-risk insurance pools for people with chronic conditions.

House Republicans have openly opposed both, which they say would prop up Obamacare rather than achieving their goal of repealing it. Mark Walker, a North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Republican Study Committee caucus, said Ryan promised him that the Alexander-Murray legislation wouldn't be included with the spending bill.

Democrats are pushing to have other provisions added, including more funding to address opioid abuse, along with the extending deportation protections for 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

A small group of senators from both parties met several times last week to discuss a possible deal that would combine the immigration protections with increased border security.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the lead Democrat in those talks, said he hopes such a deal can be added to the year-end spending legislation. Yet Republican participants, including James Lankford of Oklahoma, say they see little chance because it will take too much time to work through immigration law changes.

'It's possible to get a deal, but we're certainly not there yet,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican.

Congress is also working on another round of supplemental funding to help states like Texas, Florida and California recover from natural disasters, which could be added to the temporary funding measure or to spending bills that appropriators will rush to finish before Jan. 19.

At a time when Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House, leaders in the party are making clear they won't push the year-end spending debate over the brink and shut down the government.

'The American people need not worry that there's going to be any kind of government shutdown,” McConnell told reporters Dec. 12. 'I don't sense the Democrats want to do it, and we don't either.”

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(With assistance from Erik Wasson and Jack Fitzpatrick.)