Spending impasse persists amid GOP resistance as partial shutdown looms

Congressional leaders have failed to reach a deal on legislation to keep federal funding going past Friday, with Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy dictates to the spending bills, pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown within days.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., the majority leader, said Sunday that despite “intense discussions” that were continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance was raising the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight Friday.

“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out,” Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With the uncertainty of how the House will pass the appropriations bills and avoid a shutdown this week, I ask all senators to keep their schedules flexible, so we can work to ensure a pointless and harmful lapse in funding doesn't occur.”

With no sign of a breakthrough, President Joe Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed this month, which Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up.

But the more immediate task was to keep government spending from lapsing this week.

Three consecutive times over the past six months, Congress has relied on short-term, stopgap spending bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending flowing, essentially punting on a longerterm agreement for several weeks at a time. Each time, the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy, then Johnson — has promised hard-right lawmakers that they would try to win more spending cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.

Now, with patience wearing thin among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Johnson, whose members want him to secure major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of enactment with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House. Lawmakers in the House, which has been out of session for the past week, are set to return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a Friday deadline to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs.

Funding for all other agencies, including the Pentagon, is set to lapse at midnight March 8.

In a statement Sunday, Johnson said he had been laboring to reach a compromise.

“Despite the counterproductive rhetoric in Leader Schumer's letter, the House has worked nonstop, and is continuing to work in good faith, to reach agreement with the Senate on compromise government funding bills in advance of deadlines,” Johnson said, adding: “This is not a time for petty politics.”