US House unveils stopgap funding bill to avoid shutdown

By Safvan Allahverdi

WASHINGTON

Amid a looming deadline, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are expected to vote Thursday for a temporary spending bill to fund the government until Jan. 19 and avert a shutdown.

The Continuing Resolution (CR) bill, unveiled in the House earlier in the day, is a package that contains smaller regular appropriations bills which could be passed with only one vote in each house.

It includes $2.85 billion for the popular Children's Health Insurance Program and $750 million for diabetes programs and community health centers.

Congress has until midnight Friday to pass the bill.

"We're just bringing a clean -- what we call vanilla – CR. No games, no sneaky things. Just a continuing resolution to get us through this moment to get us into next year," House Speaker Paul Ryan told U.S. media.

"It's as clean and simple as possible."

The Senate’s stance on the bill is not yet known, but at this late stage, it is more than likely to vote on the House measure.

There are 12 different regular appropriations bills that need to be passed each year to fund federal departments and avoid a shutdown.

President Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for blocking talks on the bill with demands related to an immigration issue and distracting Americans from the tax reform legislation that Republicans just passed.

"House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, don’t let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!," Trump said on Twitter.

On Wednesday, Congress and the Senate passed a sweeping $1.5 trillion overhaul of the tax code, handing Trump his first major legislative victory with one month left in his first year in office.

Some senior Democrats said they would vote against a spending bill if Congress does not address nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who may lose their ability to live and work in the U.S. due to Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in September.

DACA was an American immigration policy that allowed some individuals who illegally entered the country as children to live and be employed with a special work permit.

But the White House repeatedly said it does not want the immigration plan sought by Democrats to be included in any spending bill.

Compounding the difficulties faced by lawmakers seeking to avert a shutdown are efforts to include a removal on military spending caps and extensions of federal payments for critical healthcare subsidies Trump scrapped in October.

The last government shutdown lasted two weeks in 2013 and cost the U.S. billions of dollars a day.