Congress OKs measure to avert federal shutdown
Leaders hope to finish $1 trillion spending package next week.
With just hours to WASHINGTON — spare, Congress easily approved a short-term spending bill Friday that would prevent a partial federal shutdown over the weekend. But on President Donald Trump’s 99th day in office, lawmakers departed Washington without completing two other measures he has coveted: a Republican health care overhaul and a budget financing government for the entire year.
The Senate sent the temporary spending measure to Trump by voice vote after the House approved it by a lopsided 38230 vote. The bill keeps the government functioning through next Friday, which leaders hope will give bipartisan bargainers enough time to finish a $1 trillion package financing govern
ment through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
But in a disappointment for the White House, Trump was destined to serve his 100th day in office — today — without being able to claim victories on health care and a yearlong budget.
T he White House had pressured GOP leaders to push legislation replacing President Barack Obama’s health care law through the House this week, in time for Trump to claim brag- ging rights by the symbolic 100th day. But late Thursday, House leaders called off that effort for the second time in just over a month after falling short of the votes they would need for passage.
“As soon as we have the votes, we’ll vote on it,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCa- rthy, R-Calif., told reporters.
The struggle over both bills was embarrassing to the GOP, which has been unable to move forward on two of its legislative priorities despite controlling the White House and both chambers in Congress.
On the spending bill, minority Democrats had threatened to withhold support for the temporary spending bill unless there was a bipartisan deal on the long-term $1 trillion measure. But they voted for it anyway, citing expectations that disagreements would be resolved in negotiations expected to continue through the weekend.
Most core decisions about agency budgets have been worked out, but unrelated policy issues — such as a Democratic request to help the cash-strapped govern- ment of Puerto Rico with its Medicaid burden — are among the holdups.
Republicans pressed for policy wins with so-called riders on the bill related to abortion, environmental regulations, and curbing new financial rules. But the Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass the measure, pushed back.
The b ipartisan bud- get talks had progressed smoothly after the White House dropped a threat to withhold payments that help lower-income Americans pay their medical bills and Trump abandoned a demand for money for a border wall with Mexico.
On the separate health care bill, House Republican leaders are still scroung- ing for votes from their own rank-and-file. House Speaker Paul Ryan wants to avoid an encore of last month’s embarrassment, when he abruptly canceled a vote on a health care overhaul at that time because of oppo- sition from moderates and conservatives alike.
Republicans have recast it to let states escape a requirement under President Barack Obama’s 2010 law that insur- ers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates. They could also be exempted from Obama’s mandate that insurers cover a list of services like hospitalization and substance abuse treatment and from its prohibition against charging older customers more than triple their rates for younger ones.
The overall legislation would cut the Medicaid program for the poor, eliminate
Obama’s fines for people who don’t buy insurance and provide generally skimpier subsidies.
On Wednesday, conserva- tives in the House Freedom Caucus announced their support for the revised health legislation. That reversed the conservatives’ opposition to the earlier edition of the legislation.
But at least 18 Republi- cans, mostly moderates, said they opposed the bill and many others remained pub- licly uncommitted. That put party elders in an uncomfortable spot because if 22 Republicans defect, the bill will fail, assuming all Dem- ocrats oppose it.
“Let us begin by being thankful that we’re not going to do great harm to our country this week,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said on the House floor Friday morning.
But he offered a word of caution: “Now, there’s always next week.”