Once again, Congress is staring at the edge of the abyss.
Lawmakers return to session next week with just four days to fund the government and avert a shutdown. The deadline is April 28.
The
dynamics are different this time, compared with the 2013 meltdown.
There’s a Republican House and Senate. This is the first government
funding go-round with President Trump occupying the White House. No one
is quite sure how the Trump administration will handle the negotiations
or what are their untouchable requests. But there’s not a lot of time to
figure this out. Some Republicans fret that House GOP leaders burned
way too much time trying to rescue their stunted health care bill.
A
lapse in government funding would represent the second major
legislative failure by Trump and the Republican Congress. A shutdown,
following the failure to repeal and replace ObamaCare, could prove
politically catastrophic for the exclusive, governing party in
Washington.
But here are the keys. First, funding the government
could, yet again, hinge on ObamaCare. Secondly, while Republicans run
Washington, Democrats hold many of the cards in this poker game.
The
House GOP’s stumble to repeal and replace ObamaCare before the recess
didn’t appear to have a direct connection to the pending government
funding battle. But now it may. Just days ago, Trump declared he would
yank subsidies known as “cost-sharing reductions,” or CSR’s, from
ObamaCare programs. The government directs the CSR payments to insurers
who grant coverage to low-income people. A dried-up subsidy could force
insurers to drop ObamaCare and spike premiums for the poor.
Trump
views the ObamaCare subsidies as leverage to force Democrats to the
table on health care. Democrats contend the president is holding the
health care assistance “hostage” and imperiling those who aren’t well
off. Trump has engaged with few Democrats since taking office on
addressing ObamaCare or funding the government. Those who lose coverage
(many of whom backed the president last fall) will know
precisely who
forced them to lose coverage should Trump successfully strip the
subsidy. Still, there’s no better place to withdraw the subsidies than
in the upcoming spending bill. One would think the president would drop
the CSR’s in this spending bill if he’s serious about the new policy.
But
that is a poison pill. Republicans may love the idea. However, it
torpedoes any notion that Democrats might support the spending package.
“The
spending bill cannot be done by one party alone,” opined Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., before the recess. “These bills
can’t pass without a reasonable number of Democratic supporters in the
Senate.”
Therefore, is the president willing to stick to his guns
on the ObamaCare subsidies or test the possibility of a government
shutdown?
Blame the Democrats for this? Well, it’s hard to do that when Democrats don’t formally control any of the levers in Washington.
This
is why it’s hard to make good on campaign promises. The rhetoric sure
sounds lofty in the cornfields of Iowa and the snows of New Hampshire.
But now?
Speaking of campaign promises, how’s funding for that
wall going? It’s unclear if Trump will insist lawmakers attach money for
the border wall to this upcoming spending package. But you can bet that
Democrats will again bolt if that scenario comes to pass.
Wouldn’t
the president latch money to construct the wall to this spending bill
if he were serious about the project? But then again, Trump probably
could get the wall and fail to keep the government open, too.
Plussing-up
military dollars? Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain,
R-Ariz., is clear the Pentagon needs a jump-start in funding. That’s
something else on which Trump campaigned. But Congress operates under
the Budget Control Act of 2011. That plan capped what’s called
“discretionary” spending for years down that road and created
“sequestration,” the budgetary phenomenon of arbitrarily limiting
various spending pots regardless of need. Under the Budget Control Act,
the “discretionary” spending ceiling (excluding entitlements like
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) for this cycle is $1.07
trillion. Pouring in additional money for the military (or, for that
matter, the wall) busts those sequestration limits. Keep in mind that
many fiscal conservatives in the House and Senate want to spend less
overall. That’s one of the reasons Republicans need to lean on Democrats
for votes to keep the lights on in Washington.
One of the best
ways to determine the musculature of a policy is to calculate how much
money Washington devotes to a given initiative.
How about
stripping sanctuary cities of federal dollars? A good place to execute
that policy would be a rider in this spending bill. Democrats would
interpret such an approach as another poison pill and balk at voting for
such a measure.
With the deep uncertainty over whether Congress
can address all of this in such a short timeframe, there’s already
discussion of punting and adopting a stopgap measure of a week or two.
But
are these policy promises idle threats or does the president insist on
Congress including such provisions in the spending bill? Does Trump
concede on a few subjects and let Democrats score some wins? Do they
fail to work any of this out and spark a government shutdown?
Congress
completed much of the work on the spending bills behind the scenes over
the past few months. Back in December, Democrats only wanted to fund
the government through late March. Republicans demanded late April and
prevailed. Never mind that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., promised to
abandon the now common practice of bundling together spending bills
rather than advancing them individually. That approach could come later
this year. But Congress certainly didn’t do any of that ahead of this
spending deadline.
So something has to give. And yet again, Congress stares into the abyss.
Capitol
Attitude is a weekly column written by members of the Fox News Capitol
Hill team. Their articles take you inside the halls of Congress, and
cover the spectrum of policy issues being introduced, debated and voted
on there.