Lawmakers trade barbs as another shutdown looms

WASHINGTON (CN) — It’s déjà vu all over again — again — for Congress as lawmakers are staring down the barrel of yet another potential government shutdown, with little movement toward any sort of budget compromise.

It’s the second time this year, and the fourth time in recent months, that the ongoing spending fight on Capitol Hill has threatened to trigger a shutdown, which would bottleneck government services and likely put thousands of federal employees on furlough.

Now, with the first part of a stopgap budget approved in January set to expire March 1, appropriators in the Republican-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate are sparring over a set of four full-year spending bills aimed at striking a compromise between the parties’ policy priorities.

The Senate has already passed its version of the budget package, but negotiations have stalled in the House. With a partial shutdown just days away, lawmakers have yet to reach a deal — and both Democrats and Republicans are eager to point fingers as things slow to a crawl.

In a letter to his Democrat colleagues over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer placed the blame for a possible shutdown at the GOP’s feet, writing that Republican lawmakers have “shown they’re more capable of causing chaos than passing legislation.”

“It is my sincere hope that in the face of a disruptive shutdown that would hurt our economy and make American families less safe, Speaker Johnson will step up to once again buck the extremists in his caucus and do the right thing,” Schumer said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, writing in a post on X, formerly Twitter, Monday morning, called the Senate leader’s remarks “counterproductive” and said the House is “continuing to work in good faith to reach agreement with the Senate on compromise government funding bills in advance of the deadlines.”

Johnson argued that some of the policies appropriators are still negotiating are new provisions added to the budget legislation by Democrats, which he framed as more extreme than the framework of the Senate’s proposed spending plan.

“This is not a time for petty politics,” said Johnson, adding that Republicans would continue to work toward an agreement despite his view that other issues such as border security “must be addressed immediately.”

Johnson and Schumer are set to meet Tuesday with President Biden to discuss, among other things, the ongoing spending battle.

Meanwhile, some of the House’s more conservative members have floated the idea of a yearlong continuing resolution that would keep the government funded at 2023 levels, bemoaning the possibility that an eventual full-year compromise budget would leave out a slew of Republican policy positions.

Writing in a letter to Speaker Johnson last week, the House Freedom Caucus worried that the forthcoming spending agreement would be “released at the latest moment before being rushed to the floor for a vote.”

“If we are not going to secure significant policy changes or even keep spending below the caps adopted by bipartisan majorities less than one year ago,” wrote the representatives in the voting bloc, referring to spending limits adopted in debt ceiling legislation last spring, “why would we proceed when we can instead pass a yearlong funding resolution that would save Americans $100 billion in year one?”

The Freedom Caucus warned Johnson that failing to follow through on conservatives’ policy priorities —  which include ending a Pentagon abortion travel fund, defunding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives pistol brace rule and walking back the White House’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan — would sap Republican support for compromise legislation.

“There are many other policies and personnel that Congress should not be funding, and a failure to eliminate them will reduce the probability that the appropriations bills will be supported by even a majority of Republicans,” the lawmakers said.

Since Congress rallied to pass a short-term funding patch in January, lawmakers have made little headway in hammering out a bipartisan budget agreement. In the meantime, though, House leadership has overseen the demise of a Senate border security compromise bill that would have packaged immigration reforms with aid for Ukraine and Israel.

Congressional Republicans also sank a stand-alone funding bill for Israel and voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — a move that took two attempts to pass the House and which both Democrats and legal experts have suggested has little constitutional merit.

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