The deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown is Friday. It looks increasingly likely that, rather than reach a deal on a long-term spending bill before the holiday recess, Congress will pass another short-term agreement that delays the deadline to January 19. There is simply too much distance between Republicans and Democrats, and not enough time for them bridge the gap.
Democrats had flirted with the idea of opposing any spending bill that did not include a legislative fix for DACA, with Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) promising activists that the party “will not leave” for the year without such a fix. (Leadership stopped short of endorsing the shutdown gambit.) Now, though, Senate Democrats appear poised to support the stop-gap measure, which does not contain any language on DACA. Among many Republicans, support for a renewal of the program is contingent on the passage of border-security measures in exchange.
Republicans, meanwhile, had been sparring among themselves over whether to include two health-care provisions in the spending bill: Alexander-Murray, which would fund cost-sharing-reduction payments, and Collins-Nelson, which would fund state reinsurance programs. Weeks ago, Senate GOP leadership struck a deal with Susan Collins (R., Maine) to support the measures in exchange for her support of tax reform. House Republicans, however, said they would not support such a deal unless it included Hyde-amendment language to bar the money these measures would appropriate from paying for insurance plans that cover abortions. This afternoon, Collins and Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) released a joint statement saying they would wait to push for those provisions until after the holiday recess.
With Congress agreeing to delay these battles (and some others), the major obstacles to avoiding a shutdown have been removed — temporarily. The new deadline will loom, and the two parties have quite a bit of ground to cover before they can reach an agreement.