Republican demands and division are driving the impasse toward a shutdown

The spending showdown that has brought the government to the brink of a partial shutdown this week is being fueled by Republicans in Congress who, after failing in their attempts to cut federal funding, are still clinging to right-wing policy dictates.

Republicans in the House of Representatives loaded their spending bills with hundreds of partisan policy mandates, the vast majority of which had no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate or being signed by President Biden. These include measures targeting different parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda, such as one to restrict access to abortion drugs and another to stop the Department of Veterans Affairs from flagging veterans deemed mentally incompetent in a federal background check required to purchase a gun.

With just four days to go before funding for roughly a quarter of the government expires, some of these issues are emerging as major sticking points in negotiations to reach a deal to keep the money flowing. Republicans are also still trying to cut federal programs aimed at providing nutritional assistance to low-income families, as well as women and infants.

Complicating the picture for Speaker Mike Johnson, who met with President Biden and the other top leaders in Congress at the White House on Tuesday, is that Republicans themselves are divided over what to push for in the spending talks. Ultraconservative lawmakers who rarely support spending legislation have been the loudest voices in favor of cuts and tough policy provisions, but more mainstream and politically threatened Republicans have refused to support them.

In one case last fall, more moderate lawmakers helped defeat a spending bill that prevented money from being spent to enforce a District of Columbia law that protects workers from discrimination for seeking contraceptive or abortion services .

Republicans have also tried to undo a new Food and Drug Administration rule that would allow mifepristone — the first pill used in a two-drug abortion regimen — to be distributed through the mail and in stores. And they want to stop the VA from flagging that a veteran has been deemed mentally incompetent in a federal gun background check without a court order.

“These far-right agents of chaos in the House of Representatives do not represent the majority of Republicans in the country,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, said Tuesday ahead of the meeting at the White House. “They do not represent the majority of Republicans in the Senate. They don’t even represent a majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives. Yet they try to force everyone else into submission to get what they want.”

If Congress does not approve a new tranche of funding by midnight Friday, funding for military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs will expire. Funding for all other agencies, including the Pentagon, will expire at midnight on March 8.

The driving force behind this impasse is the same dynamic that has persisted since this Congress began a year ago. Far-right Republicans have tried to use their party’s razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives as leverage to force cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money from Mr. Biden and Senate Democrats can be spent. And the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy and now Mr. Johnson — has worked to appease that restive group, agreeing to tailor spending bills to meet their demands, even though many of its members have rarely, if ever, supported appropriations bills during their time in the country. Congress.

The result is that congressional leaders have had to turn to Democrats three times to help them fund the government with short-term spending.

Right-wing Republicans have grown increasingly unhappy as they have watched government funding continue to flow without cuts or policy changes, and they are ratcheting up pressure on Mr. Johnson to secure some kind of conservative victory in the current spending negotiations.

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.

Lucas Broadwater reporting contributed.