WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is expected to vote on another short-term spending bill Tuesday night, setting up a showdown with the Senate with just two days before government funding runs out.
The House version, which is expected to pass with little Democratic support, was written by Republican leadership to win the support of the conservative Freedom Caucus and defense hawks who are squeamish about supporting a fifth stop-gap funding bill.
But it has little chance of passing the Senate, pitting the two chambers against each other once more as lawmakers struggle to produce a bill that will gain the support of at least nine Democrats in the Senate and nearly all Republicans in the House — the two dynamics necessary for a bill to move through both bodies of Congress.
“I urge the Senate Democrats to stop their filibuster and provide our men and women in uniform the resources they need, the support they need,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said.
The measure, which was released last night, would fund the government for an additional six weeks, until March 23, but it would fund the Defense Department with a boost for the remainder of the fiscal year.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the House bill has no chance as written. With short-term spending bills, funding levels and programs typically remain the same as the previous fiscal year. In exchange for more money for the military, Democrats want an increase in domestic spending, too.
“House Republicans continue marching down a very partisan road,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, by proposing a funding bill that “will raise defense spending but leave everything else behind.”
“We support an increase in funding for our military and our middle class. The two are not mutually exclusive. We don’t want to do just one and leave the other behind,” Schumer added.
It’s a debate that’s been ongoing since the fiscal year began on October 1 — and the reason Congress has continued to pass continuing resolutions instead of appropriating money for the entire year. The incremental bills have given lawmakers more time to reach a deal, but negotiators have yet to reach a consensus on top-line spending levels that would satisfy both parties’ demands — increased military spending for Republicans, and an equal increase in domestic spending for Democrats — and fund the federal government for longer than weeks at a time.
Talks have also slowed for unrelated reasons, as well. Republicans were sidetracked in the fall with tax reform, and Democrats halted headway last month to demand progress on protections for Dreamers, immigrants who had been brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Their legal status could be in jeopardy after President Donald Trump gave Congress a March 5 deadline to find a permanent solution to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
Both Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday morning on the Senate floor that those negotiations are finally seeing some “progress.”