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House GOP leaders eye 'defense only' spending bill

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GOP scrambles as government funding runs out on Dec. 22
As they rush to finish work on a $1 trillion-plus tax bill — and deal with a political earthquake in Alabama — GOP congressional leaders are wrestling with another huge issue: how to avoid a government shutdown.
House GOP leaders are considering a funding bill that covers a full year of defense spending at $640 billion but only keeps the doors open at other federal agencies until Jan. 19, according to several Republican lawmakers and aides. That end date is one day before across-the-board spending cuts are scheduled to kick in.
Money for a popular children’s health program is likely to be added to the House GOP package in a bid to win some Democratic support, the sources said. A disaster aid package to help Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands recover from this summer’s devastating hurricanes would be pushed back until January.
Current government funding runs out on Dec. 22.
While House and Senate Republican leaders are trying to finish work on a tax package by next week, they’re also involved in bipartisan talks to raise the budget caps and avoid a government shutdown, an outcome that both sides say they want to avoid. Both GOP and Democratic aides said there is “progress” in those discussions, but Republicans complained that Democrats are dragging the talks out to see what happens on the tax-cut package. And Democrat Doug Jones’ stunning victory in Tuesday’s Alabama Senate race does nothing but strengthen Democrats’ political hand.
House Republicans are set to meet on Wednesday afternoon to review their options in the budget discussions. Leadership aides cautioned no final decision had been made on what approach the GOP would take in the negotiations.
The still-fluid House GOP proposal would buy time for the “Big Four” congressional leaders — Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — and the White House to reach a “topline” agreement on funding levels for all agencies throughout fiscal 2018. House and Senate appropriators could then craft an omnibus spending package.
Separate negotiations dealing with DREAMers, President Donald Trump’s border wall and immigration reform would continue on a parallel track, but would not be included in the omnibus package.
But Senate Democrats have already rejected the “defense only” approach, warning on Tuesday in a letter to McConnell that “If presented with partisan legislation that leaves these key priorities behind, we will oppose it.”
Following on that missive, Schumer delivered his party’s clearest ultimatum yet in this round of spending negotiations.
“If Speaker Ryan elects to follow in the footsteps of the Freedom Caucus, he’ll be walking right over a cliff into a Republican government shutdown,” the minority leader warned Tuesday. He suggested GOP leaders would be wise to attempt the defense-only strategy without delay — if they’re hell-bent on that tact — so lawmakers have enough time to reverse course without prompting a pre-Christmas shutdown.
“Do it now, not at the eleventh hour. He’ll see that it’s defeated, and he’ll have to go back to the drawing board.,” said Schumer.
Yet Ryan and other House Republicans are caught in a bind — pushed by conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Committee to take a hard line in spending talks, while also under pressure from defense hawks to get more money to the Pentagon and other national security agencies as quickly as possible. House and Senate Democrats, for their part, insist on parity in any budget deal between defense and nondefense spending, something GOP leaders won’t back at this time.
The defense-focused spending bill, which would allow no concessions to Democrats, has fired up rank-and-file House Republicans who usually feel jammed by the Senate in year-end spending talks.
“I would love to get defense [appropriations] done this week or next week, troops get their raise on Jan. 1, and DOD moves forward, and then we can deal with the rest of the discretionary budget on a little bit less anxious time frame,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said.
However, longtime House appropriators close to the GOP leadership aren’t convinced it’s a winning strategy.
“They seem to think that Democrats will roll over on this. I’m not convinced they will,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said of a large bloc of his House GOP colleagues. “I’m not convinced all the Republicans in the Senate are on board with it.”
“In a perfect world, we’d take a vote, be able to leave town and the Senate would take up what we did and move on. But we know that’s not how the world has worked or is working,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) added.
“I wouldn’t think that the Democrats are going to just agree to a full-year defense bill without getting something in return,” Womack noted.
The defense-focused spending bill — which Democrats have dubbed the “Puntagon” — was first floated weeks ago by members of the House Freedom Caucus and the conservative Republican Study Committee. House GOP leaders privately agreed to consider the idea to drum up support for a two-week stopgap spending bill in mid-December that was passed with nearly all Republican votes.
But the plan has now gained favor among a broader coalition of House Republicans.
Some House GOP lawmakers have even suggested the lower chamber “jam” those on the other side of the Capitol by passing the measure and promptly skipping town, forcing the Senate to either clear the politically unpalatable legislation or shut down the government.
But since Republicans are still eight votes shy of a supermajority, most GOP leaders in both chambers acknowledge that they will ultimately need to buckle to Democratic demands to get a product to Trump’s desk.
Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) said House members are “just going to have to get back on a plane and come back” if they try to leave the Senate with an unpassable bill.
“That’s not how it works,” said Boozman, who chairs the spending subcommittee in charge of homeland security funding.

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