US House passes bill to avoid government shutdown

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The US House of Representatives passed a stop-gap funding measure late Thursday that would avert a government shutdown, sending it to the Senate where Democrats have vowed to block it.

With the federal government set to run out of money Friday at midnight – the eve of the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration – the bill cleared the House with a 230-197 vote.

But prospects appeared gloomy in the Senate, where Democrats eager for leverage on budget and immigration deals were intent on shooting it down.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said that if agreement is not reached by Friday night, there should be an even shorter-term funding measure of a few days that would "give the president a few days to come to the table."

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Majority Leader, said the House bill provides for four weeks of funding, enough to allow talks to continue "without throwing the government into disarray for no reason."

He said Schumer wants to "hold the entire country hostage."

President Donald Trump – who Schumer said "is like a Sphinx on this issue" – on Thursday added to the chaos gripping Washington, weighing in on the intense Republican maneuvering aimed at avoiding a politically embarrassing funding debacle.

After a burst of tweets he second-guessed top Republican lawmakers and slapped down his own chief of staff, who had been leading a White House push on Capitol Hill for a budget compromise.

Arriving at the Pentagon for a visit, Trump told reporters the government "could very well" shut down Friday.

In the event the funding dries up, federal employees for agencies considered non-essential are ordered to stay home until a budget deal is struck, at which point they are paid retroactively.

The most recent shutdowns – in 1995, 1996 and 2013 – saw about 800,000 workers furloughed per day.

Key government bodies such as the White House, Congress, State Department and Pentagon would remain operational, but would likely furlough some staff.

The military would still report for duty, but troops – including those in combat – would potentially not be paid.

The finger-pointing had already begun, with each side blaming the other for a failure to reach a budget compromise after three previous funding extensions.

And yet in another tweet, Trump criticized the Republican short-term funding measure, opposing a sweetener intended to make it hard for Democrats to vote against it.

The sweetener is a six-year extension of CHIP, a popular children's health insurance program which Democrats have worked hard to protect.

Up against a similar deadline last month, lawmakers passed a short-term resolution to keep the federal government funded until January 20.

If the Republican-led measure fails, Democrats will gain greater leverage to insist on a funding compromise that includes protection from deportation for the so-called "Dreamers," the estimated 700,000 immigrants brought to the US illegally as children.

Negotiations on a bipartisan compromise that includes a solution for the "Dreamers" program collapsed in acrimony at a White House meeting last week.

Source(s): AFP