Shutdown still looms, but deal emerging

WASHINGTON — With a shutdown clock ticking toward a midnight Friday deadline, congressional Republicans scrambled Wednesday to finalize a spending bill. A major obstacle evaporated after key GOP senators dropped a demand to add health-insurance subsidies for the poor.

The No. 2 House Republican, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, said party leaders have scrapped plans to combine a short-term spending bill with $81 billion worth of disaster aid and a $658 billion Pentagon funding measure. Instead, Republicans are likely to schedule a separate vote on the disaster package.

The strategy for averting a government shutdown appeared to be coming into focus, though it looks like many items on Capitol Hill’s list of unfinished business could be pushed into next year. It also appears the upcoming shortterm measure will fund the government through mid-January.

“I think if this all comes together we can vote and leave,” McCarthy said in anticipation of a House vote Thursday.

Hopes for a bipartisan budget deal to increase spending for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies appeared dead for the year, and Democrats were rebuffed for now in their demands for protections for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, announced Wednesday they would not seek to add the insurance subsidies, which are designed to stabilize the Affordable Care Act’s markets. The justpassed tax bill repeals the requirement that individuals purchase insurance.

Trying to combine the health measure with the spending bill was a demand of Collins when President Donald Trump and Senate GOP leaders secured her vote for the tax-cut measure. But House conservatives strongly opposed the move, and it became plain that Senate leaders were not able to deliver for her.