Republicans scramble to try to avert government shutdown as deadline nears

House Republican leaders are moving toward a vote on a stopgap spending measure Thursday to avoid a shutdown, but it’s unclear if there are enough GOP votes or if President Donald Trump’s tweets could derail their efforts.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and his lieutenants were up against the clock and their own ranks as they scrambled to lock down votes, and that was before Trump tweeted that a key sweetener for Senate Democrats — a six-year reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program — shouldn’t be included in a short-term measure.

“CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!” Trump wrote in a tweet originally interpreted as disparaging the current proposal to keep the government funded, though congressional Republicans later said the President was fully on board with that plan.

If Congress doesn’t send a bill to the President approving more money by midnight on Friday, most federal agencies will be forced to stop operations. GOP leaders in the House can’t count on Democrats who have said they will not support a short-term spending bill that funds the government into mid-February if it does not include a fix for DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that expires in March. That left Ryan looking to pass the spending bill with just Republican votes.

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