House approves two-week stopgap spending legislation

Senate is up next in effort to avoid shutdown

WASHINGTON – The House approved a spending bill Thursday that will fund federal agencies at current levels for another two weeks as lawmakers scramble to avoid a government shutdown on Friday.

The short-term measure, approved by a vote of 235-193, is designed to keep the government open through Dec. 22 while lawmakers try to work out an agreement on military spending, immigration and other issues.

The bill now heads to the Senate, which must act quickly if the government is to remain open. The government will run out of money at midnight Friday unless Congress approves the short-term fix.

While the legislation would eliminate the threat of an immediate government shutdown, it does not resolve questions about how the government should be funded down the road.

More negotiations will be needed to come up with a long-term funding bill, and those talks could bump up against the Christmas holiday, when lawmakers will again have to pass another spending measure or risk a government shutdown.

In the days leading up to the House vote, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., struggled to find support from his caucus to bring the bill over the finish line after members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus threatened to vote against a deal without having input in the next round of negotiations.

Ahead of the vote Thursday afternoon, Democrats lamented the process used to approve the spending bill.

“Why would we need another two weeks when (Republicans) had all this time to work on these issues?” said Rep. Rose DeLauro, D-Conn.

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, conceded that a short-term funding bill isn’t ideal for funding the government, but argued “it’s the only responsible vote” because more time is needed to come up with a longer spending plan.

“A vote against this resolution is a vote to shut down the government.”

In the Senate, the Democratic caucus has not taken a position on a short-term funding bill. Assuming all 52 Senate Republicans vote for the bill, at least eight Democrats will be needed for passage.

Moderate Democrats, such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, could help provide the winning margin.

Spokesman Jonathan Kott said Mancin was likely to vote in favor of the bill.

In the next round of spending talks, Democrats are hoping to negotiate legal protections for the nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and had been shielded from deportation under an Obama-era executive order.

The government will run out of money at midnight Friday unless Congress approves the short-term fix.

President Trump reversed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, in September but gave Congress six months to come up with a solution. Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say that Congress can’t wait until just before the deadline to find a solution.

“January and February are not the most productive months in Washington ... I don’t want the fate of these young people to be hung in the balance,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a vocal advocate for a solution for DACA recipients before the end of the year, said Thursday.

Durbin has been participating in bipartisan negotiations and said that Democrats had offered a proposal that combined legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship with language that strengthens border enforcement.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats had no intention of shutting down the government, but “we will not leave here in December without a DACA fix.”