Spending deal keeps government open another week
Healthcare plan vote postponed
WASHINGTON — A short-term spending agreement to keep the federal government open for another week overwhelmingly passed Congress on Friday.
The House voted 382-30 on Friday to approve the deal and the Senate unanimously approved it a short time later. House and Senate negotiators are set to work through the weekend to finalize a longer-term deal that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year in September.
Top staff and leaders on the appropriations committees had tried late Thursday to reach a longer agreement, but were unable to resolve differences on several unrelated policy measures that have plagued the process since the beginning, according to several congressional aides familiar with the talks.
"We're willing to extend things for a little bit more time in hopes that the same sort of progress can be made," Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday morning.
A late push to act on new health-care legislation had threatened the bipartisan spending deal, and for now that debate remains in flux.
Leaving a 90-minute meeting in the office of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., late Thursday night, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said there would be no healthcare vote Friday and that the main focus of the impromptu huddle was to ensure that the leadership had the votes to pass the one-week funding bill.
"We are not voting on health care tomorrow," McCarthy said, denying that leaders had ever wanted to vote by Friday.
"We're still educating members," he said, adding: "We've been making great progress. As soon as we have the votes, we'll vote on it."
On Friday morning, House GOP leaders were closing in on the votes needed to pass a health overhaul, but no vote is expected in the coming days, according to a senior House GOP aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing discussions.
The failure to revive the healthcare bill was yet another blow to President Donald Trump as he nears the 100day mark on Friday. While congressional leaders in both parties focused this week on keeping the government open, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other top administration officials launched dual attempts to pressure Republican lawmakers into a new agreement to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
In recent weeks, Trump plowed into healthcare negotiations not only by wooing members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, but by trying to forge a bond with Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., the co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, a group of moderate Republicans. He was the only moderate represented in the recent talks.
Instead of delving into details, MacArthur and Trump would often talk about the president's late father, Fred, whose black-and-white portrait sits alone and prominent on a desk in the Oval Office.
"I knew his father for many years and have handled his insurance," MacArthur, a former insurance executive, said. "Fred had thousands of apartments in Brooklyn and I'd go out with him to settle claims, sitting in the back of the car with him and talking."