by Amanda Head
In less than two weeks, the American people might be facing another shutdown if Congress does not act. A possible two-stage plan might avoid that.
Republican appropriators are designing a two-stage plan to dodge a March 14 potential government shutdown: a short term measure to continue current funding and full-year plan to begin trimming government next year by anywhere from $2 trillion to $10 trillion over the next decade.
President Donald Trump also is staying deeply involved, even hosting a meeting at the White House on Wednesday with House fiscal conservatives, Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., told Just the News on Tuesday evening.
According to House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, a short-term funding bill would go into effect with a year-long budget for FY2025 still in the works.
"A government shutdown is unacceptable, and Republicans have continually worked in earnest to deliver a deal on full-year appropriations," Cole said in a statement. "Given the deadline before us, we are pursuing every pathway to ensure a lapse in funding never occurs. This two track strategy includes both a focus on a stopgap to provide certainty while negotiations on a full year appropriations continue.”
Speaking on the divide between Democrat and Republican funding priorities, Cole added: “Democrat leadership remains laser-focused on restricting presidential authority. It’s a nonstarter and battle they lost to the American people.”
Appropriations Committee ranking member Sen. Patty Murray has unofficially logged her vote as a “no” and remarked that she was “absolutely shocked” at Republicans’ plan for the stopgap.
She published a document called the “anomalies” list detailing extra funding requests from the White House for programs like the WIC nutrition assistance program for pregnant women and babies, immigration enforcement and increased pay for service members.
Senate working towards a short-term deal
House Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, are vehemently opposed to any DOGE-recommended spending cuts and are therefore bellicose on a shutdown.
Jeffries released a statement on Sunday via his congressional website that said: “The top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, remains ready, willing and able to talk with our Republican colleagues, but there has been zero outreach from the Trump administration and House Republicans have walked away from the negotiating table.”
One unnamed senior Democrat lawmaker told Politico that “at some point you’ve got to have a goddamn backbone. I’m not giving them a blank check until September.”
On the Senate side, Collins told reporters on Monday that she and her committee were preparing a yearlong continuing resolution but are simultaneously working towards a short-term deal “to allow us time to negotiate the appropriations bills.”
Trump, on X, threw his support behind a “clean, temporary” measure that continues funding through September after reportedly solidifying the plan in a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Republican leaders plan to release a text of the funding stopgap by Saturday as the full-year negotiations continue, according to sources privy to a closed-door Monday meeting. Those sources have declined to be identified. For Republicans who are reticent to support a continuing resolution, their concerns may be abated after a meeting set to happen at the White House on Wednesday.
"I'm not a big fan of CRs for the obvious reason, you're just continuing to spend at the same levels of Biden and Pelosi. I think there's a lot of danger to that. But I am going with a group of conservatives to the White House tomorrow to talk to President Trump about what his plans are and to see what we can help him deliver," Crane told the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show Tuesday evening.
The timeline for the whole process is expected to stretch into May, according to Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs. “The Senate is going to take up their version or, you know, finish that package off, completing it, a week or so after the the reconciliation comes out next week," Biggs told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast. "So we're talking two, three weeks out, and then you're going to have the conference committee on it, there's some resolution, and probably mid-May, maybe if we're lucky, you get that reconciliation package completely done and out.”
Congress: 25% approval rating
Government shutdowns typically hurt the majority party and as of the last week of February, congressional approval is underwater by 22 points. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 47% of respondents disapprove of the job Congress is doing while only 25% approve.
After the stopgap is ironed out, the next step is reconciling the cuts envisioned by the House ($2 trillion over a decade) and the Senate ($10 trillion over same period) and incorporate identified savings from Elon Musk's DOGE.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, a House Appropriations Committee member, told "Just the News, No Noise" on Tuesday evening that the numbers seem large until lawmakers realize just before COVID the government was about $2 trillion small just five years ago.
"They put out a goal of $2 trillion. That seems large right now, but if you look at it, just to put it in perspective, that's roughly where we were pre COVID. The Federal Government grew astronomical amount during COVID, and now there's been attempt among the status quo, the establishment, to kind of lock that in as the new norm. That's not what we need to do," Cloud said.
"What we need to do is is do what we can to get rid of the waste, fraud, make this lean," he added.
Amanda Head
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/republicans-floating-two-part-plan-avert-government-shutdown
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