House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday it would be “wrong” to hold up a short-term spending deal over “unrelated issues,” as congressional leaders face the prospect of a partial government shutdown without action by the end of the week.
“For people to hold up funding for our military over these unrelated issues and for deadlines that don’t even exist, this Friday, that makes no sense to me,” he told reporters.
Some Democrats have threatened to vote against any short-term funding extension that doesn’t also include a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and Mr. Ryan said that attitude would be detrimental to an already underfunded military.
He said the federal government’s primary responsibility is to provide for the “common defense.”
“And when you see a situation where more men and women in our military are dying in training accidents than they are in combat, it’s a serious situation,” he said. “And to block funding for our military with a Friday deadline over unrelated issues just makes no sense to me. It’s wrong.”
The federal government is already running on a short-term spending bill, which expires at midnight Friday.
Mr. Ryan said that ultimately, he hoped “cool heads” would prevail in the spending showdown. Republican leaders are trying to rally their members around a four-week funding extension that would also extend a popular children’s health insurance program for six years and delay some Obamacare taxes.
Mr. Ryan said leaders haven’t conducted a formal whip count of the legislation, though some Republicans emerging from caucus meetings Tuesday and Wednesday indicated they would likely back it, albeit grudgingly.
Leaders are meeting some resistance from conservatives, though, who are pushing for a package that would fund the military through the rest of the fiscal year while providing a short-term extension for non-defense funds.
Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters Tuesday evening that there wouldn’t be enough support to pass the leadership’s plan with only Republican votes in the House.
Mr. Ryan also said lawmakers want to fix DACA in a “balanced” way.
President Trump announced last year he would wind down the program, with a March 5 phaseout deadline, and various bipartisan groups have struggled to come up with a solution to provide permanent protections for so-called Dreamers that could pass both the House and the Senate.
“We want to fix DACA in a balanced way so that we don’t have the same problem down the road,” Mr. Ryan said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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