GOP leaders struggle to avert shutdown

Bloomberg

Republican congressional leaders are struggling to separate the immigration blow-up set off by President Donald Trump from a funding bill to avert a US government shutdown at the end of this week.
Democrats say the burden is on Trump to help break the stalemate after he rejected a bipartisan proposal to shield young, undocumented immigrants from deportation and ignited outrage by reportedly disparaging Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.” Democrats want to attach such an immigration measure to the must-pass spending bill, an idea House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reject.
“No, we’re not going to do that,” Ryan said during an event in his home state of Wisco-
nsin. “People are attaching these as far as leverage is concerned,” but Republican leaders won’t go along, he said.
Government funding runs out at the end of the day, and Republican leaders are weighing another short-term measure that would extend it until February 16, a person familiar with the
negotiations said.

SPENDING DEAL
Both parties have struggled for months to agree on a spending deal for the rest of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but Congress already has had to pass three short-term funding bills. This time, Democrats, and some Republicans, want to use the next attempt to keep government operations funded as a vehicle for other bills to provide disaster-relief funds, shore up Obamacare, extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and possibly to protect young immigrants brought to the US illegally as children. A dispute over how much to allocate to defense and domestic programs is another obstacle to a broader fiscal agreement.
GOP leaders don’t expect to have enough time to reach to craft a budget agreement even if they get a breakthrough in negotiations this week, according to the person, who asked for anonymity because the talks are private.
Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer will have to decide whether this is the moment to force a showdown on immigration that temporarily results in a partial government shutdown in an election year.
Republicans’ slim 51-49 Senate majority means they need at least nine Democratic votes to pass a spending bill. The GOP is counting on support from some Democrats, including from among the 10 who are up for election in November in states won by Trump.
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who is on the ballot in November and who voted with Republicans to help keep the government operating with a stop-gap measure in December, said he has little desire to see a shutdown.
He said he remains confident that some kind of deal on immigration can be worked out before it comes to that.
“Shame on any of us if we sit here and say, OK, we’re going to let it run out for the sake of politics and shut the government down,” Manchin said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”