Congress sent President Barack Obama a short-term spending bill to keep the government open through next Wednesday as lawmakers and the White House rushed to finalize a $1.1 trillion government-wide spending bill and a sprawling tax package.
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The short-term measure, already agreed to Thursday by the Senate, is necessary to allow more time for talks on the twin year-end deals, with dozens of issues still unresolved. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he would not waive a House rule that requires legislation to be posted two days before the chamber votes on it. Aides and lawmakers said Friday they were hoping to complete the spending legislation on Monday, setting up a Wednesday vote in the House.
Are we headed toward another government shutdown?
“I’m not going to put a deadline on it”, he said.
Commenting on parallel negotiations over a permanent renewal of several expired tax breaks, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi warned that Democrats would not support the measure as proposed, adding that it should not be combined with the spending measure.
“You don’t bring government to the brink of a shutdown over policy riders”, Polis said.
“There’s a honeymoon period in here”, conservative Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., said of Ryan’s recent ascension to the top House job. However, it now appears that the House will not take up that legislation until it returns from recess in January.
“Everything is tenuous right now”.
The two-year budget and debt deal passed earlier this year set the overall spending levels, but that left it up to the powerful Appropriations Committee to allocate the money ahead of the deadline for a partial government shutdown. She contended Democrats proposed just a few, “and ours were very reasonable”.
In the wake of shootings in California and Colorado, the California Democrat is also calling on Republicans to end a 19-year ban on federally-funded gun violence research.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said he doesn’t expect first votes on the bill until Tuesday night.
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Also at issue is whether the spending bill will include a Republican proposal, opposed by Democrats, to block Syrian refugee resettlement in the USA, as well as a plan backed by both parties to tighten the visa waiver program, which eases travel to the US for some 20 million people a year.
