After all the Wednesday celebration of effectively handing the country's coffers over to the donor class with their tax bill, congressional Republicans immediately returned to fighting over how—and whether—to divvy up any leftovers. By Friday at midnight, when funding for everything expires. House Republicans might have the votes to pass something Thursday with just Republican votes. Which means it could contain enough awful that it couldn't get the necessary Democratic support in the Senate to reach 60 votes. Here's where it stands as of Thursday morning.
House leaders released a plan late Wednesday that would maintain funding for government operations through Jan. 19 and delay cuts to defense and non-defense spending known as sequestration. It includes extra funds for some Pentagon expenses and health programs, as well as $2.85 billion to keep the Children’s Health Insurance Program running through March, with some conditions.[…]
The last provision of the bill would waive the automatic cuts to some mandatory federal programs, which would kick in because of the deficit impact of the tax overhaul passed this week. That spending cut trigger is known as PAYGO, for pay-as-you-go, and waiving it would make it easier for President Donald Trump to sign the tax legislation passed this week before the start of 2018. […]
House Speaker Paul Ryan and other GOP leaders acted after objections from conservative Republicans to earlier plans by Senate leaders to use the spending bill also for reauthorizing the children’s health insurance and surveillance programs, providing money for the opioid crisis and legislation to stabilize Obamacare insurance markets. There also weren’t enough votes in the Senate for full-year funding for the Pentagon, which conservatives wanted, without lifting caps on domestic funding.
They apparently do intend to save Medicare from PAYGO cuts in 2018, an election year. Their other option is having Trump wait until January to sign the tax cuts (causing who knows what kind of procedural/constitutional confusion) so that the cuts wouldn't apply until 2019. They have decided to do an $81 billion disaster relief package separately, to get Democratic votes to make sure that it happens. Because the Freedom Caucus maniacs don't believe in disaster relief. Freedom Caucus maniacs continue to live and work in an alternative universe, one where they aren't part of a bicameral legislature. Witness Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who says "I don't understand. Do we take orders from the Senate here?" He still doesn't understand how our government works.
Mitch McConnell has caved to one Freedom Caucus demand, breaking his "promise" to Susan Collins in return for her tax cut vote that there would be immediate votes on stabilizing Obamacare. Surprise. He has apparently also caved on using this continuing resolution for a full reauthorization of CHIP, allowing them to keep those kids hostage a few more months. What's unclear at this point is how far Democratic leadership is willing to go on in their demand that the Dream Act get a vote, whether they would force a shutdown over that and other demands including CHIP and more opioid crisis funding.
Stay tuned. It's going to be a long day in the Congress.
