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Ryan won GOP support for his short-term government funding bill after including provisions to target Obamacare.

By RACHAEL BADE, SARAH FERRIS and JENNIFER SCHOLTES

01/16/2018 10:05 PM EST

Updated 01/16/2018 11:01 PM EST

House Republicans on Tuesday night appeared to coalesce around a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown Friday even as conservatives threatened to oppose it and a bitter fight continued over the fate of more than 700,000 Dreamers.

Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled a plan at a House GOP Conference meeting to fund the government through Feb. 16, and numerous rank-and-file members quickly endorsed it despite their frustration with another short-term patch. To further sweeten the pot, the Wisconsin Republicans bill also includes a delay of several Obamacare taxes and a six-year extension of a popular health care program for children.

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That combined with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosis (D-Calif.) threats to withhold Democratic votes to help pass the measure appeared to have won over key GOP skeptics.

Its a good strategic position because not only does it offer CHIP [funding] for six years but you also have a medical device tax delay as well as the Cadillac tax delay, said Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.), referring to some of the taxes that would be delayed. I think it puts Democrats in a very difficult position of having to vote against that in the House or in the Senate.

House GOP leaders will whip the bill Wednesday before a possible Thursday vote. If the funding measure passes the House, senior Republican sources in both chambers expect the measure to clear the Senate.

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House GOP leaders, however, still have some work to do: House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said many of his conservative members oppose the plan, dismissing the tax delays as a gimmick that wont necessarily help leaders find 218 votes for passage.

After the GOP Conference meeting, the House Freedom Caucus met and did not take a position on the stopgap bill. But Meadows expressed skepticism leadership's plan would pass in its current form with just Republican votes.

"Based on the number of 'no' and undecided votes, there is not enough votes for a Republican-only bill," he said.

Defense hawks, likewise, still arent thrilled. Rep. Austin Scott, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, stood up at the GOP Conference meeting to lecture leadership about how temporary continuing resolutions cripple the military.

In the end, the issue with national security is totally different than any of the other issues hanging out there, the Georgia Republican said in a brief interview before the meeting. We need to resolve this issue.

Democratic and Republican party leaders had hoped to reach a long-term budget agreement by Friday, when the government runs out of money. But Democrats have been loath to strike a deal to raise strict spending caps without a solution for young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors.

Those young adults, known as Dreamers, face deportation as early as March unless Congress codifies the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, which President Donald Trump is rescinding.

The stalemate has led to a series of stopgap funding bills, and this weeks will be the fourth since September.

Typically, appropriators abhor funding the government on a temporary basis, as it does not allow agencies to plan. But even some appropriators backed Ryans pitch Tuesday night.

It was pretty positive, even though some people are saying and rightfully so Man, here we go again! said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). Theyre frustrated that were not getting the final deal done, but they understand the position were in, too. This is the best we can do right now. We dont have a deal on DACA.

Thats also the feeling of some top defense hawks in the House, who've used their votes to pressure leaders before.

We're going to have a CR, said Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who leads the appropriations subcommittee on defense. We're not going to shut down the government.

The House continuing resolution will include a two-year delay of the medical device tax, an unpopular Obamacare levy on equipment such as defibrillators and surgical tools. The tax has been delayed for two years but went back into effect on Jan. 1.

The bill also includes a delay of the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health insurance plans favored by labor unions, as well as on Obamacares health insurance tax, which is now going into effect after a one-year delay.

Newly elected House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said the play call, as outlined by Ryan, is to dare Democrats to vote against all the extra policy items GOP leaders have thrown into the spending bill. The Childrens Health Insurance Program has long been a top priority for Democrats, for example, and many Democrats are also no fans of the Obamacare taxes that would be delayed.

Pelosi is expected to whip her caucus against helping Republicans get the votes needed for passage. But Republicans hope the CHIP attachment entices some House Democrats, particularly Congressional Black Caucus members, to peel off.

In December, when GOP leaders attached a short-term CHIP provision to the bill funding the government through Jan. 19, some Democrats privately complained about voting against the measure. Opposing a six-year funding measure which goes well beyond Decembers six-month patch would be even more difficult for these Democrats, Republicans believe.

Its a strategy that we think is a winning formula, Womack said. I mean, when you think about medical device tax, Cadillac tax, health insurance tax, voting against the CR, voting against funding our troops those are really difficult positions to maintain if youre the other side.

For some, however, thats not good enough.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a key player in the House Freedom Caucus, will oppose the leadership plan because, he said, it doesn't boost Pentagon spending sufficiently. He and Scott made a push during the conference meeting to include a full year of military funding, but that would almost certainly fail in the Senate without an equivalent increase in non-defense spending.

"I'm for funding the troops, holding the line on non-defense, and doing what we told the American people we were going to do," Jordan said on Tuesday while exiting the meeting. "This package is not consistent with what the election was about."

Freedom Caucus leaders plan to present GOP leaders with their own spending proposals as soon as Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. At least one of those ideas is a full-year of defense spending attached to a monthlong stopgap for domestic spending.

Still, some conservatives are already on board with the proposal. Rep. Mo Brooks, an Armed Services and Freedom Caucus member rarely aligned with leadership, backed Ryan's idea Tuesday night.

Were going to address the government staying open, the Alabama Republican said, expressing joy that the plan didnt include a DACA fix. There will be nothing that relates to illegal aliens in this issue. This is to fund the government. I think it will pass the House.

The response, indeed, had senior Republicans feeling more confident Tuesday night than they had in a while.

We dont need any Democrats in the House, boasted senior appropriator Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). And I dont think the Democrats in the Senate have the nerve to shut down the government.

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

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House Republicans coalesce behind plan to avert shutdown ...

Republicans were trying to tamp down a conservative rebellion Wednesday and keep a stopgap spending bill on track ahead of a major vote Thursday, hoping to prove their party could govern and in the process trap Democrats in a shutdown showdown.

The bill includes government funding through mid-February, extends the popular Childrens Health Insurance Program and delays a series of unpopular Obamacare taxes, though it doesnt include any action on immigration something Democrats had demanded.

Top Democrats and Republicans did manage Wednesday to restart negotiations over a solution for illegal immigrant Dreamers by holding their first meeting in a week. In what passes as progress on Capitol Hill, they agreed to meet again Thursday to talk about how to continue meeting moving forward toward a bill that meets President Trumps four goals.

What we are trying to do is just get a schedule of meetings, said Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican. That was the goal [to] get in a room.

Given the time crunch, its unlikely any immigration deal could be added to the spending bill, which Republican leaders have scheduled for a vote on the House floor Thursday.

Republicans had hoped for easy passage in the House, where their numbers control the process, and send the bill to the Senate, where Democrats would have to decide whether to either accept the deal or filibuster, sending the government into a partial shutdown.

Republican leaders saw a chance to flip the script that for more than two decades has given them the blame for shutdown showdowns.

But conservatives were undermining those plans, threatening to defeat the spending bill unless it catered to their own demands for more military money and a promise to vote on a strict immigration crackdown bill in the future.

Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican and leader of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, said enough of his members were ready to vote against the stopgap bill to prevent it from passing without Democratic votes.

I think that the Freedom Caucus has always been willing to take the hard votes when they believe that theyre speaking for millions of Americans who feel like Washington, D.C., has forgotten them, Mr. Meadows said.

But White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in a Fox News interview Wednesday evening that it looked like leaders would be able to avert a shutdown.

It would seem that they have the votes to continue funding the military, take care of the child health care issue and prep some other things, he said. So as I understand it, they have the votes and theyre fairly confident.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday morning that Republican leaders hadnt taken the temperature of their members, but he was hoping both parties would support the stopgap bill.

To block funding for our military with a Friday deadline over unrelated issues just makes no sense to me. Its wrong, Mr. Ryan said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr. Trump doesnt like short-term spending bills but thinks this one is necessary.

The president certainly doesnt want a shutdown. And if one happens, I think you only have one place to look, and thats to the Democrats, who are holding our military and our national security hostage by trying to push through other policies that have nothing to do with the budget, she said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said its Republicans who would suffer.

Theyre in charge, Mr. Schumer said. Donald Trump has repeatedly said on tape, over and over again, what the country needs is a good shutdown.

Although Republicans could pass the bill without Democratic support in the House, they would need Democrats to vote with them to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. The chamber has just 51 Republicans, and one of them, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, indicated he would vote against the bill.

Mr. Graham and Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, had been negotiating an immigration plan that they wanted to be part of the spending deal. But Mr. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, made clear that they wouldnt allow the Graham-Durbin deal to reach the floor since the White House opposed it.

Mr. Trump repeated that opposition in an interview Wednesday with Reuters.

Its the opposite of what I campaigned for, said Mr. Trump, calling the proposal horrible and very, very weak.

The plan included a generous pathway to citizenship to perhaps millions of illegal immigrants but delivered Mr. Trump less than 10 percent of his border wall and no substantive changes to the overall level of chain migration.

Mr. Graham and Mr. Durbin released details of the plan Wednesday evening and said they have a total of seven Republicans supporting them.

Mr. Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, was still going through the motions to back his bill but appeared to be acknowledging it was moribund as he rejoined negotiations with his counterparts: Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, both Republicans, and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, a Democrat.

Were all highly motivated by the fact that come March the 5th, this program will no longer be available, and all of the work permits that currently exist for the 690,000 DACA recipients will go away, said Mr. Cornyn. And so were all committed to getting to yes, and were going to keep working hard until we get there.

Democrats had argued for a self-imposed deadline of this Friday rather than March 5.

Mr. McConnell seemed to put pressure back on the White House to broker a final immigration deal.

Im looking for something that President Trump supports, and he has not indicated what measure he is willing to sign, Mr. McConnell told reporters, saying the Senate can move to a bill as soon as we figure out what he is for.

House Democrats meeting with Mr. Kelly earlier in the day said they were disappointed that the White House wasnt talking specifics.

There either is a proposal or there isnt a proposal, said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat.

Mr. Gutierrez also said Mr. Kelly called Mr. Trumps campaign vision for a border wall paid for by Mexico not fully informed.

Kelly took credit for educating the president on the wall and that a concrete barrier from sea to shining sea was no longer the conception of border security barriers supported today by the White House, Mr. Gutierrez said.

Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.

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Republicans aim to avert rebellion, shutdown

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Now, with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate and the White House, the party is being forced to confront its deep divisions over immigration, which threaten to compromise its capacity to provide coherent governance.

The debate is matching various party factions against one other and testing the willingness of the Republican base to accept a necessary compromise with Democrats that is certain to be portrayed by some as a moment of political betrayal.

"Everybody has their own franchise ... but somebody has to put forward a document, somebody has to put forward a bill," Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said Wednesday. "I don't see any other game in town."

For Trump, the immigration policy debate marks a watershed moment. It is one of the first times that he has been required to show genuine political courage, to take steps likely to alienate his loyal voters, who have stuck with him through everything.

All presidents reach such a moment sooner or later, when the national interest, the requirements of governance and even their own legacies require them to expunge political capital they have spent years building.

Trump's improvised and shifting positions over the past few days on what he wants to see in the bill suggest that he has not yet reached the moment when hesitation solidifies into resolution and trust in political fate.

Yet Republicans on Capitol Hill say that only an unequivocal statement by Trump about the bill he wants to see, and a sincere effort to offer cover to conservative lawmakers, will allow a compromise to get to his desk.

Closing the deal

Given the central role played by immigration in his presidential campaign, Trump may be the only personality in Washington who can close the deal.

But the President's comment Tuesday at a bipartisan meeting at the White House that his position would be "what the people in this room come up with" struck many of his allies in Congress as an abdication of leadership, and well short of the level of commitment needed to bring the party together.

That has left the fate of the immigration bill, despite multiple efforts by different groups in Congress to find a solution, in limbo.

"In terms of how we get to the finish line, I'm not sure I see that yet," one Republican senator told CNN on Wednesday on condition of anonymity. "Everyone seems to think there's the outlines of a deal, but like I said, I'll believe it when I see it."

For Republican lawmakers, the showdown marks a moment when the responsibilities of power clash with their pursuit of ideological purity.

The party is split between comparative moderates who want to solve the issue, understand the political and humanitarian weight posed by the plight of those affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and believe that the GOP must ease its position on immigration to ensure future viability. They include South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Flake, who have fought for years to enact immigration reform and are part of the 'Gang of Six' GOP and Democratic senators seeking a deal.

The chasm that the party must traverse is huge. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday he could not countenance voting for the kind of bill he understands would be put forward by the gang of six.

"It would be inconsistent with the promises made to the working men and women of this country that we would put them first, so I very much hope Congress doesn't do so," he said.

Potent Issue

No one in the Republican Party doubts the potency of immigration. Key figures in the conservative media have warned it is the one issue that could tear the party apart and even threaten Trump's hold on his dedicated base voters.

In fact, immigration is an issue that changed the face of American politics, since it was used deliberately by Trump to build an insurgent power base that eviscerated the Republican primary field in the 2016 campaign.

The current debate is also forcing Democrats into a searing process of political self-examination -- since the fate of DACA recipients is as important to their grass roots as the wall is to Trump's. Failing to fight their corner could have consequences for the party's support among Hispanic voters, who are vital to the party's hopes of winning back power on Capitol Hill this year and the White House in 2020.

But since it is in power, the price for the Republican Party has never been so acute if it fails to find a resolution for DACA recipients. Overwhelming majorities of Americans support shielding people who were brought to the US illegally as children through no fault of their own, and the specter of mass deportations could be hugely damaging to the GOP in already tough midterm elections.

Even lawmakers who oppose granting a path to citizenship for DACA recipients understand the need to avert that nightmare scenario.

"Right now, I think the best way to do this is not to offer any kind of long-term citizenship, but legalization instead," said Rep. Mark Walker, the leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

As well as the national political consequences of acting, or not acting, the DACA imbroglio is forcing the GOP to question longtime and fundamental positions on the details of immigration as never before.

That journey into the party's soul includes finally coming up with a definition of what exactly Trump means -- and will accept -- when it comes to funding the border wall that he placed at the center of this campaign.

Will the President -- and his voters -- settle for an amalgam of walls, fences and electronically monitored border areas broken by areas of impassable topographical features like rivers and mountains, for instance?

Then the GOP must shape its own position on questions that include whether DACA recipients should be allowed to bring their parents or grandparents into the country once they are legalized. The party must arrive at a definition of exactly what it means by border security and balance the demands of its rambunctious base with other Republican constituencies like business and agricultural groups that are alienated by hard-line GOP positions on workplace verification systems like E-Verify.

The politics of the debate are so treacherous that there is no guarantee that any compromise forged by the various interest groups in the GOP caucus will win majority support in the party or in Congress, a dynamic that often played out in the health care and tax reform debates and can make assessing the progress of any reform effort highly uncertain.

"Just because we have two groups negotiating their position, they don't speak for everybody," said Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy.

"I mean they don't speak for me. I'm gonna see what this final product looks like."

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Republicans, Trump face immigration reckoning - CNNPolitics

Photo Christopher Serrano, 10, winces in pain as a doctor examines his infected ear at Dell Childrens Medical Center in Texas. Christopher and his younger brother stand to lose their health insurance as the CHIP program ends. Credit Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Children from lower-income families could soon lose access to affordable health care because the Republican leaders in Congress have failed to renew the Childrens Health Insurance Program. This is a travesty.

After passing a lavish tax cut for corporations and wealthy families, Congress hastily left town last month without reauthorizing the federal-state health insurance program, which benefits nearly nine million children. Authorization expired in September, and so far states have kept CHIP going with unspent funds carried over from previous appropriations. Before Christmas, Congress allocated $2.85 billion to the program, saying that the money would take care of the childrens needs until the end of March. But that appears to have been a gross miscalculation, because the Trump administration said on Friday that some states would start running out of money after Friday, Jan. 19.

CHIP was created in 1997 and has helped halve the percentage of children who are uninsured. It has been reauthorized by bipartisan majorities of Congress in the past. But Republican leaders in Congress all but abandoned the program last fall and devoted their time to trying to pass an unpopular tax bill that will increase the federal debt by $1.8 trillion over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released last week. By contrast, CHIP costs the federal government roughly $14.5 billion a year, or $145 billion over 10 years.

Republicans have held childrens insurance hostage to force Democrats to accept cuts to other programs. Last year, House Republicans insisted that they would reauthorize CHIP only if Democrats agreed to offset spending on the program with cuts to Medicare and a public health program created by the Affordable Care Act. Democrats balked at those demands, given that Republicans did not bother to offset the loss of revenue from their boondoggle tax cuts.

A deal between the two sides should theoretically be easier to reach now. Thats because the C.B.O. said last week that reauthorizing CHIP would add just $800 million to the federal deficit over 10 years, much less than the $8.2 billion it had projected earlier. The budget office updated its estimates after the adoption of the tax law. That law will significantly reduce federal spending on health care by eliminating the requirement that people buy insurance, which many people do with the help of government subsidies. The budget office says that provision and a separate change to insurance regulations by the Trump administration will reduce the cost of insuring children.

Originally posted here:
Republicans in Congress Are Failing Americas Children

Three days after California finally began recreational marijuana sales, bringing its $13.5 billion black market industry into the light, Jeff Sessions began rolling back the era of legal state sales by instructing federal prosecutors to ignore the Obama-era memo that directed prosecutors to mostly ignore marijuana-related crimes in states where the drug had been legalized.

By rescinding the Cole memo, Sessions left many legal dispensary owners, marijuana growers, and recreational users in the lurch, wondering how federal prosecutors will deal with their emerging industry going forward as the White House moves in the wrong direction.

Heres a thought: Instead of letting the Department of Justice dictate the countrys drug agenda, what if lawmakers actually, you know, did their jobs and passed a law? Congress could just repeal the Controlled Substances Actparticularly the part that classifies marijuana as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use.

Removing marijuanas classification in the CSAand beginning to recognize legitimate medical purpose on a federal levelwould be smart not just as policy, but also because it would remove all such power from Sessions, making his decrepit decision moot.

Somewhere between 54 and 64 percent of Americans now favor legalization or decriminalization. Support for medical marijuana is at nearly 90 percent. Representatives should take the views of the people seriously and recognize the part they must play in ensuring the DOJ doesnt tread all over the will of the people. Nine states and Washington D.C. now have recreational sales, and a majority of states have legalized some form of medical use, with no apocalyptic effects. Some studies even suggest opioid use could go down if weed were readily available as an alternative painkiller.

Theres an opening here for Republicans to get on the right side of the issue, and popular opinion. Yes, there are still curmudgeonly conservatives buying into the law and order, reefer madness mentality that has caused us catastrophic harm. But some older conservatives (former Texas Governor Rick Perry, Senator Rand Paul, even Baptist televangelist Pat Robertson) are down with at least medical marijuana, if not some form of decriminalization. Plenty of younger conservatives are prepared to go fartherper Pew, around 63 percent of millennial Republicans were in favor of legalization as of 2015.

I think the Cole memo let members of Congress off the hook, said Bill Piper, senior director of the Drug Policy Alliance. It made the need for statutory change less urgent. Sessions is essentially kicking the ball into their yard, forcing them to deal with it.

They just might. Minutes after Sessions move was made public, a bipartisan group of legislators including Republican Sen. Cory Gardnerwho joined every other Republican senator in voting for his former colleagues nomination as AG, but says he did so after Sessions promised him that he wouldnt rescind the Cole memo, and thus tamper with Colorados thriving pot market, tweeted their frustration.

Meanwhile, back in March, Republican Rep. Thomas A. Garrett introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017, co-sponsored by Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, Republican Scott Taylor and a dozen others, including Republican Justin Amash. The bill would remove marijuana entirely from the hydra that is the controlled Controlled Substances Acta bold bill that has predictively stagnated since its introduction. Sessions memo could help force it forward.

Letting law enforcement worry about real crimes, and freeing up some of the money used to incarcerate low-level nonviolent offenders would be a boon for fiscal conservativeseven law-and-order types should back it. Conservatives should keep in mind that Americas punitive, rarely-rehabilitative system not only fails at helping people reform their ways, but the drug war has cost more than $1 trillion since Richard Nixon declared it 45 years ago.

Instead of trusting Sessions to sic an army of prosecutors on states, patients, and consumers in various states, Congress should take Gabbard and companys effort to repeal or amend the CSA seriously. Then, and only then, will they actually be representing the constituents they claim to care so much about.

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Republicans: Instead of Whining About Jeff Sessions, Legalize Pot