House Republicans working to avoid another shutdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republican leaders have come out with a plan to keep the government open for six more weeks while Washington grapples with a potential follow-up budget pact and, perhaps, immigration legislation.

GOP leaders announced they would seek to pass the stopgap spending bill by marrying it with a full-year, $659 billion Pentagon spending bill that’s a top priority of the party’s legion of defense hawks.

The measure would keep the government running through March 23 and also reauthorize for funding for community health centers that enjoy widespread bipartisan support. Pairing the Pentagon’s budget with only temporary money for the rest of the government wouldn’t go anywhere in the Senate, vowed Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said it “would be barreling head first into a dead-end.”

On the other hand, the Senate might respond with a long-awaited spending pact to give whopping increases both to the Pentagon and domestic programs. Talks in the Senate on such a framework appeared to intensify in hopes of an agreement this week, aides and lawmakers said, and the House GOP strategy appeared designed in part to invite the Senate to complete budget negotiations and use the temporary spending bill to advance such a budget agreement.

Under Washington’s arcane ways, a broad-brush agreement to increase legally binding spending “caps” would be approved, then followed by a far more detailed catchall spending bill that would takes weeks to negotiate.