Trump Signs Short-Term Spending Bill Setting New Deadline to Act

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump signed a two-week extension of federal funding that averts a government shutdown on Saturday but defers contentious decisions on spending on defense and domestic programs.

Trump’s signature Friday extends government spending at current levels through Dec. 22. It also sets the clock ticking for a new round of challenging negotiations among Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and the White House.

If Trump and the lawmakers can agree on overall budget limits over the next two weeks, one option would be to include that into yet another short-term spending bill to keep the government open until sometime in January. Then Congress could try to hash out the remaining details of a trillion-dollar spending plan for the rest of the fiscal year. Lawmakers also are likely to take up raising the nation’s debt limit at the same time.

The ceiling on federal borrowing was suspended in September but snaps back into place on Friday. The Treasury Department has about $250 billion worth of extraordinary measures available to extend the deadline, plus about $80 billion in cash. The Congressional Budget Office has said the Treasury can use those measures through late March or early April.

At a White House meeting Thursday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and the two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Trump exuded optimism.

Very Friendly

“We’re all here as a very friendly, well-unified group,” Trump said before an Oval Office meeting with the Republican and Democratic leaders and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “We hope that we’re going to make some great progress for our country.”

McConnell said after returning to the Capitol that while an agreement on spending limits wasn’t reached, "We agreed that we want to resolve all of these issues in the next couple of weeks.”

Pelosi and Schumer, in a joint statement, described the White House meeting as “productive. Nothing specific has been agreed to, but discussions continue.”

Read more: What Shuts Down During a U.S. Government Shutdown

Republican Representative Paul Gosar, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said before the vote that he fears the Dec. 22 deadline will force Republicans into too many concessions to Democrats on spending and policy.

“I’m tired of seeing the same play again and again,” he said.

Equal Funding

Ahead of the White House meeting, Schumer said Democrats are working in “good faith” toward a year-end deal that meets some of their priorities, including equal boosts in funding for non-defense and defense programs and a measure protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation.

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One of the key points in the White House talks was negotiating a longer-term budget deal that could raise military and non-defense spending above caps put into place following the 2011 standoff over raising the debt ceiling. Republicans and Democrats have discussed a potential two-year agreement raising spending by about $200 billion. A key issue has been whether the $549 billion defense spending cap would be raised by a larger amount than the $516 billion non-defense cap.

The House Freedom Caucus is pushing Ryan to try to force Democrats to accept higher military funding without any increase in domestic funding. It wants to attach the full-year 2018 defense spending bill to the stopgap spending bill that would keep the rest of the government open only until January. The defense measure, H.R. 3219, would give the Defense Department $584.2 billion in discretionary funding and $73.9 billion in war funding -- more than the current $522 billion cap for the Pentagon alone.

“Until we get those assurances, we are just kicking a can down the road,” said Republican Representative Andy Biggs, a member of the Freedom Caucus.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker said GOP lawmakers agreed to go along with a two-week bill after Ryan promised to push Democrats to pass the defense spending bill separately and to keep immigration and payments to Obamacare insurers out of the next stopgap.

Walker said Ryan also committed to seek to include disaster relief spending in the Dec. 22 spending bill, as well as an effort to cut $190 billion in entitlement spending over 10 years through “some kind of work requirement for capable-bodied adults with no dependents.” Ryan declined to comment when asked by reporters about the GOP negotiating position.