The spending impasse continues as the Republican Party resists as a partial shutdown looms

Congressional leaders failed to reach an agreement on legislation to keep federal funding flowing last Friday, with Republicans pushing to add right-wing policy dictates to spending bills, bringing the government to the brink of collapse within days a partial closure occurred.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, said on Sunday that despite “intense discussions” continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance raised the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight on Friday.

“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give Members sufficient time to review the text, it is now clear that House Republicans need more time to reach a resolution,” Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With uncertainty about how the House of Representatives will pass the appropriations bills and avert a shutdown this week, I ask all Senators to keep their schedules flexible so we can work to ensure there is no pointless and damaging funding loss. ”

Without any sign of a breakthrough, President Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed earlier this month and that Speaker Mike Johnson has adopted. refused to answer.

But the more immediate task was to prevent government spending from collapsing this week.

Three times in a row in the past six months, Congress has relied on short-term relief bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending going. Each time, the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy, then Mr. Johnson — has promised far-right lawmakers that they would try to secure more cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.

As patience runs out among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Mr. Johnson, whose members want him to make major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of success if Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives, who have not met for the past week, will return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a Friday deadline to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs.

Funding for all other agencies, including the Pentagon, will expire at midnight on March 8.

In a statement on Sunday, Mr Johnson said he had made efforts to reach a compromise.

“Despite the counterproductive rhetoric in Leader Schumer’s letter, the House has worked nonstop, and continues to work in good faith, to reach an agreement with the Senate on government funding compromises ahead of deadlines,” Mr. Johnson said , adding: “This is no time for petty politics.”

Negotiators have continued to negotiate a series of partisan policy mandates that House Republicans included in their budgets, such as measures to restrict access to abortion, which mainstream Republicans from competitive districts have refused to support.

Mr Johnson, in his statement on Sunday, accused Senate Democrats of “trying at this late stage to spend money on priorities further to the left than what their chamber agreed on.”

Several Republicans in the House of Representatives admitted weeks ago that they expected Johnson would have little success in winning significant policy concessions. Mr. Johnson told Republicans on a conference call Friday not to expect many of their top policy priorities to be included, though he said he expected to score some smaller victories, according to people familiar with the private discussion who described this on condition of anonymity. Part of the reason they would have to settle for less, he explained, was that far-right lawmakers had routinely blocked consideration of spending legislation, undermining the House of Representatives’ influence in talks with the Senate.

Instead, members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus have begun lobbying Mr. Johnson to instead pass a spending bill that would impose across-the-board cuts.

“If we can’t achieve significant policy changes or even keep spending below the ceilings passed by the two parties less than a year ago, why continue when we could instead pass a one-year funding resolution that would save Americans $100 billion in the first year? ?” they wrote in a letter to Mr Johnson last week.

They pointed to a provision in the budget deal Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Biden struck in May that would cut federal spending by 1 percent across the board on April 30 if Congress could not reach a government-wide spending deal before then.

But senators from both parties are determined to avoid that scenario, saying the cuts would mainly hit Pentagon spending.