WASHINGTON — The federal government is scheduled to shut down in just over two weeks — but lawmakers are no closer than they were three months ago on an agreement to avert lapses in funding.
Still, that hasn’t stopped both parties from drawing lines in the sand on what they want in exchange for support on a government funding bill. And it hasn’t stopped both parties from deeming the others’ demands dead on arrival.
“The Republicans have been in good faith on negotiations on the funding issues all along, and the Democrats have had completely unreasonable conditions assigned to this,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters on Wednesday.
It’s not yet clear what plans are to avoid a government shutdown on March 14, as Republican leaders have considered either passing a temporary funding measure to extend until the end of the fiscal year or to finalize the remaining appropriations bills and pass them individually through each chamber.
Regardless of which path they choose, the government funding package will need to have bipartisan support to make it to President Donald Trump’s desk. And Democrats are grasping for any piece of leverage they can to include in the final deal.
At the top of their list: reining in the power of Trump and his right-hand man Elon Musk.
“The one thing (Democrats) are asking for is simply an assurance that, if there’s going to be Democratic votes, that the president and Elon Musk will follow the law and they won’t just take our bill that we worked really hard on and rip it up,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week.
Democrats have repeatedly decried attempts by the new Trump administration to freeze funding previously approved by Congress and halting them from going toward federal agencies. As a result, Democrats are threatening to withhold support on any governing funding plan unless Trump vows to spend the funds as allocated.
Republicans are not yet willing to bite.
“Our differences with our Democratic colleagues on some of the restrictions they’re demanding on what we consider legitimate presidential authority — we’re not moving on that,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said on Wednesday.
The disagreements and lack of a topline deal have left Republicans and Democrats at a standstill — and it has members playing a brutal game of who’s to blame for a possible shutdown.
“We’re pretty far apart right now, but it is not because of the Republicans. It’s because of the Democrats,” Johnson said.
But Democrats view it differently.
“Republicans have consistently shut down the government in the past,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told ABC earlier this month. “It would be no surprise if they do just that this time around.”
The government is scheduled to enter a shutdown on March 14, after which federal funding is set to lapse for a number of agencies unless Congress passes some sort of agreement. Lawmakers can move forward either passing all 12 appropriations bills individually — which seems unlikely at this point — or some sort of temporary spending deal to extend the deadline.