House puts priority on keeping government open
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers returning to Washington this week will find a familiar quagmire on health care legislation and a budget deadline dramatized by the prospect of a protracted battle between President Donald Trump and Democrats over his border wall.
Trump’s GOP allies control Congress, but they’ve been unable to send him a single major bill as his presidency faces the symbolic 100day mark on Saturday — the very day when the government, in a worst-case scenario, could shut down.
House leaders told GOP lawmakers Saturday that they plan to devote their energy this week to keeping the federal government open, avoiding an immediate commitment to take up health care despite pledges to do so by conservatives and the White House.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaking on a conference call with GOP members, offered no specific plan on how or when lawmakers might see details of a new proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act, which White House officials promised would receive a vote by Wednesday.
Trump also hopes to use the $1 trillion catchall spending bill to salvage victories on his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, a multibillion-dollar down payment on a Pentagon buildup, and perhaps a crackdown on cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement by federal authorities.
Congress faces a midnight Friday deadline to avert a government shutdown. But negotiations on the spending measure, a pile of leftover business from last year that includes the budgets of almost every federal agency, have hit a rough patch.
Ryan made clear that his top priority was to pass a stopgap spending bill to keep government open past Friday, an objective that requires Democratic support. “Wherever we land will be a product the president can and will support,” Ryan said, according to a senior GOP aide on the call.
Negotiations have faltered because of disputes over the border wall and health law subsidies to help low-income people afford health insurance.
Democratic support will be needed to pass the spending measure, and Republicans fear taking the blame if the government shuts down on their watch.
“We have the leverage and they have the exposure,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California told fellow Democrats on a conference call Thursday, according to a senior Democratic aide. Pelosi wants the spending bill to give the government of Puerto Rico help with its Medicaid obligations, and Democrats are pressing for money for overseas famine relief, treatment for opioid abuse, and the extension of health benefits for 22,000 retired Appalachian coal miners and their families.
An additional Democratic demand is for cost-sharing payments to insurance companies that help low-income people afford health policies under the health law. The payments are a critical subsidy and the subject of a lawsuit by House Republicans. Trump has threatened to withhold the money to force Democrats to negotiate on health legislation.
Trump’s presidential victory makes it “completely reasonable to ask and to insist that some of his priorities are funded,” White House budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in an interview. “We are more than happy to talk to the Democrats about some of their priorities, but we encourage them to recognize that they are a minority party.”
Both the White House and Democrats have adopted hard-line positions on Trump’s $1 billion request for a down payment on construction of the border wall, a central plank of last year’s campaign. Talk of forcing Mexico to pay for it has largely been abandoned. But in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Trump stopped short of demanding that money for the project be included in the must-pass spending bill.
Then, on Saturday, Trump added to the confusion with a promise to release details of a tax overhaul this week.
He tweeted that his “Big” tax-overhaul and tax-reduction measure “will be announced next Wednesday.”
Also on Saturday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly suggested in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper scheduled to run today that Trump may demand the funding.
“I think it goes without saying that the president has been pretty straightforward about his desire and the need for a border wall,” Kelly said. “So I would suspect, he’ll do the right thing for sure, but I would suspect he will be insistent on the funding.”
Health care is on a separate track and facing trouble, too. The White House is pressing House Republicans to rally behind a revised bill so GOP leaders can schedule a vote this week that could let Trump fulfill a 100-days promise.
Ryan said that the House will vote on a health care bill when Republicans are sure they have the support to pass it, according to several GOP aides on Saturday’s call. The measure would have repealed much of Obama’s 2010 overhaul and replaced it with fewer coverage requirements and less generous federal subsidies for many people.