House planning vote to keep government open until March 22

[Swordsmyth]

The House will vote early next week to pass a short-term spending bill to avert a government shutdown, multiple aides told CNN on Thursday. Aides say the stopgap measure will keep the government funded through March 22, with aides telling CNN the expectation is that will give lawmakers time to find a way forward on an immigration bill to protect recipients of the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-dreamers-immigration-program/index.html).
The Senate would move on a spending bill after the House.
All eyes are on whether conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and defense hawks support the continuing resolution moving out of the House. Both corners of the GOP conference have expressed concerns with continuing to use short-term spending measures to keep the government's lights on.
The timing would push the next leverage point on government funding, however, well past a deadline for DACA.

More at: http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/politics/shutdown-vote-government-spending/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+rss%252Fcnn_latest+(RSS%253 A+CNN+-+Most+Recent)

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/gop-said-to-look-at-extending-government-funding-to-march-23

Debt ceiling a pending issue too.


The March 23 end-date could raise alarms about the nation’s debt ceiling, if next week’s measure doesn’t also include raising the federal borrowing limit. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that the U.S. may run the risk of default without a debt ceiling increase in early March. The Treasury Department separately urged Congress to raise the limit by the end of February.


House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told reporters in West Virginia that even if a spending caps deal is reached next week, another stopgap bill is inevitable because it would take weeks to come up with a catch-all spending measure to finish the fiscal 2018 process.

"We’re still negotiating the contents and duration of that," Ryan said of the stopgap bill.


But there may be objections from conservative House Republicans in the House toward supporting another temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution.

“I don’t see the possibility of the House Freedom Caucus supporting a fifth CR without substantial changes," Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, chairman of the group, told reporters in West Virginia.

The Freedom Caucus threatened to vote against the most recent stopgap bill but relented under pressure from the White House and with a promise that the leadership would seek to drum up support for a hard-line immigration bill.