House Speaker Paul Ryan has gone back to the old Obamacare repeal well to try to cobble together a short-term spending bill that would keep government open past Friday. Because that's the surest way to mollify the nihilists and get them on board, which is what he needs to do because he can't rely on help from Democrats in doing this unless they also come up with a solution on immigration and the Dream Act.
The short-term spending bill includes a two-year delay of a handful of Obamacare provisions: the medical device tax, another delay of the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health insurance plans and on Obamacare's health insurance tax. It also includes a six-year funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, a hostage-trade they hope will entice Democrats to support, pitting the Dreamer kids against the CHIP kids. That's all to put Democrats on the spot, but the problem is as always House Republicans.
Tuesday night was a bit of a roller coaster for House GOP leaders. A closed-door conference meeting where they presented their short-term funding bill—funds the government until February 16, delays three unpopular taxes from the Affordable Care Act, extends the Children's Health Insurance Program for six years—to plenty of grumbles, but mostly acceptance that it was the only path forward. […]
But then 90 minutes later, the House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows emerged from their own closed door meeting to announce the votes weren't there for the leadership's proposal —and the conservative caucus had demands, throwing the entire Republican strategy—House, Senate and White House—into question. […]
The Freedom Caucus is precisely why Senate Democrats were mostly keeping their powder dry on Tuesday regarding a possible shutdown. No sense in taking a hard position when, as one aide put it, "House Republicans have a history of stepping on their own rakes."
The defense hawks are unhappy with the bill as well, because they’ve been pushing for increased and permanent funding there in this bill. There’s a lot of them, so that’s as much a problem for Ryan as the Freedom Caucus. Meanwhile, the bipartisan "gang of six" working on an immigration deal will release their plan Wednesday, and "are urging Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to give them a 'test vote' to show the level of support for the forthcoming legislation." McConnell's second-in-command Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who has made it his political goal in life to stop any kind of immigration reform from ever happening, says it "will not get a vote in the House or the Senate because POTUS will not sign it." Chances are very good, if it were actually put up for a vote in both chambers, it would get veto-proof majorities. Cornyn is not going to take that chance.
So, no immigration reform, no Democratic votes. Nothing has changed with the unveiling of Ryan's latest last-ditch plan because nothing has changed under Republican control of everything except that now there's even more chaos. The chances of a shutdown happening right now are better than 50-50.