A temporary government-wide funding measure that would keep the US government open past a midnight deadline was expected make its way to US President Barack Obama yesterday with time to spare.
The measure has already helped topple the top House of Representatives Republican leader and exacerbated painful divisions between more pragmatic Republicans and an ultraconservative Tea Party wing that is increasingly dominant, especially in the rough-and-tumble House.
Tea Party forces are frustrated that the measure, which would prevent a repeat of the partial shutdown of the government two years ago, fails to take away federal funding that goes to the women’s health care provider Planned Parenthood.
The Senate and then the House were scheduled to vote on the stopgap spending measure yesterday. It would provide 10 weeks of time to negotiate a budget deal for the rest of fiscal 2016.
Having dodged the immediate threat of a government shutdown, congressional Republican leaders are looking ahead to talks with US President Barack Obama on a long-term budget pact.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said that he and House Speaker John Boehner recently spoke with Obama and that he expects talks to get under way soon. The conversation took place before Boehner announced he was stepping down as speaker under pressure from Tea Party conservatives.
At issue are efforts to increase the operating budgets for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies still under automatic spending curbs that would effectively freeze their budgets at current levels.
Republicans are leading the drive to boost defense while Obama is demanding equal relief for domestic programs.
Many of those same lawmakers want to preserve stringent “caps” on the spending bills Congress passes every year, but Senate Republicans are generally more eager to revisit the 2011 budget deal that put them in place.
Boehner’s surprise resignation announcement on Friday last week followed unrest by arch conservatives in his conference who wanted to use the pending stopgap spending bill to try to force Democrats and Obama to take federal funding away from Planned Parenthood.
Boehner and McConnell opted for the pragmatic route — a bipartisan measure that steers clear of the furor over Planned Parenthood and avoids the risk of a partial government shutdown — over the opposition of the most hardline conservative Republicans.
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