WASHINGTON -- The next deadline to avoid a Homeland Security Department shutdown is days away, with no clear sign a deal is close at hand.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his colleagues, stung by a conservative rebellion last week, pressed ahead Sunday with a strategy based on opening formal negotiations with the Senate on a compromise.
With a partial shutdown of the department possible at week's end, Boehner said the House wants to enter talks with the Senate on a final bill and pointed to today's scheduled Senate vote. Congress late Friday cleared a one-week extension for the department after 52 House conservatives defied their leadership and helped scuttle legislation that would have given the agency a three-week reprieve.
"We want to get a conference with the Senate. Now, they've made clear that they don't want to go to conference. But they're going to have a vote. If they vote, in fact, not to get a conference, this bill may be coming back to the House," Boehner said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation.
Friday's defeat produced a backlash in the House, with some Republicans criticizing their conservative colleagues and others arguing it was time to fully fund the agency for the year and move on.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a former chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said Boehner needs to find a way to get a bill to the House floor without the divisive immigration provisions.
"There's no doubt it will pass. ... We cannot allow this small group to block it. Once ... this comes to a vote, we get it behind us, we go forward, then we really, as Republicans, have to stand behind the speaker and make it clear we're not going to allow this faction to be dominating and to be impeding what we're trying to do," King said on ABC's This Week.
A day earlier, Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, chastised "a small group of phony conservative members who have no credible policy proposals and no political strategy to stop Obama's lawlessness" and seem to be "unaware that they can't advance conservatism by playing fantasy football with their voting cards."
Conservatives were angered enough by a proposed three-week funding extension with no rollback of the directives Obama signed in November to spare millions of illegal aliens from deportation and by Democrats insisting on full-year funding to sink the legislation.
It was only after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., intervened late Friday, offering the one-week compromise bill, that Congress was able to avoid the crisis. Boehner was forced to reach across the aisle for Democratic votes.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who opposed both funding bills, said conservatives have gained clout since they almost toppled Boehner in January -- delivering more votes against him than any speaker since the 1920s.
"That makes him pretty nervous," Huelskamp said.
On Saturday, Michael Steel, Boehner's spokesman, said the speaker "has the strong support of the overwhelming majority of House Republicans -- and he's not going anywhere."
When asked whether members of his party were undermining efforts to find a resolution, Boehner said: "We get in an argument over tactics from time to time."
Republicans are unified on the main goal of stopping Obama's "overreach" with regard to immigration, he said.
"The promise I made to Ms. Pelosi is the same promise that I made to Republicans -- that we would follow regular order," Boehner said, referring to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Pelosi agreed to a one-week extension and told her Democratic rank and file in a letter to back the seven-day patch because "your vote will assure that we will vote for full funding next week."
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the No. 3 House Republican, said Sunday on Fox News Sunday there was no such deal.
But privately, a senior Democratic congressional aide said Boehner spoke to Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and committed to bringing up a bill without conditions. The person spoke anonymously to relate a private conversation.
Boehner on Sunday acknowledged that Friday "wasn't all that fun," but called the House a "rambunctious place."
"We have 435 members. A lot of members have a lot of different ideas about what we should and shouldn't be doing," Boehner said.
Scalise defended Boehner's actions as speaker.
"He's working hard to get our agenda moved through the House and we've already seen some good action," Scalise said.
A spokesman for Reid said Sunday there will be no negotiations with the House over Homeland Security funding and immigration. Senate Democrats are expected to block any plans for formal talks in tonight's vote.
"Sen. Reid has been clear for days on the fact that there will be no conference," said Adam Jentleson, Reid's spokesman. "House Republicans want a conference for counterproductive reasons: They want to take a clean bill that can pass Congress and be signed into law and turn it into something that can't pass by loading it back up with poison pill riders."
A so-called clean bill, in this instance, is one that focuses solely on the funding and does not include the immigration provisions.
Although a federal judge in Texas has halted implementation of the immigration plan until courts can consider its legality, conservatives believe their best chance of killing it is by using the appropriations bill that funds enforcement of immigration laws.
"That's exactly where we're supposed to have this battle," said Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., who voted against the one-week and the three-week funding bills. "Our power in Congress is the power of the purse."
Other Republicans were angered at a strategy that almost forced the 22 agencies in Homeland Security to cut services and furlough thousands of workers starting Saturday, and to order several hundred thousand people to work without pay until the dispute is resolved.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she doesn't envision Senate Democrats budging.
"We want a clean bill. We have passed, taken votes on a clean bill. It's well known," Feinstein said on CNN's State of the Union. "And I see nothing else happening, other than a clean bill."
Borrowing authority
Congress' struggle isn't limited to keeping a Cabinet department running without interruption.
Stretches of brinkmanship are certain to consume much of the legislative calendar in 2015. One critical issue is whether to increase the nation's borrowing authority, which lapses March 15.
Filing-season tax surpluses and Treasury Department accounting maneuvers could delay the need for Congress to step in until August or later. Action is mandatory or else the government would default on its obligations.
In 2011, Boehner used the debt limit as leverage to pry spending cuts from Obama. Since then, Obama has refused to negotiate. Last year, Boehner had to rely on Democratic votes to pass an extension.
Doctors who participate in Medicare face a 21 percent cut in their payments at the end of March. Because of a flawed formula dating to 1997, Medicare doctors are threatened with big fee cuts almost every year. Congress has since stepped in 17 times to prevent the cuts but has failed to permanently fix the problem.
Lawmakers hope to resolve the issue once and for all this year. In the meantime, they plan a temporary fix that would buy six months or so.
Authority to spend money from the highway trust fund expires May 31, the end of a reprieve passed last fall. The uncertainty is slowing construction in some states.
"We haven't even started talking about either one, [Medicare payments] or highways," said Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. "So that shows how procrastinated all this is."
There's also a debate among Republicans, the majority on Capitol Hill, about whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank, which provides credit to purchasers of U.S. exports.
On June 30, temporary authority expires for the bank. Critics say it picks winners such as Boeing Co. and General Electric and that too little of its financing benefits small business. The bank has support from Democrats and establishment Republicans but increasingly is opposed by conservatives, who note that its subsidies for foreign purchasers of exports such as jumbo jets give foreign airlines advantages over U.S. carriers.
Three provisions of the USAPATRIOT Act expire June 1: authorizing the bulk collection of telephone records, obtaining surveillance warrants without naming the person being wiretapped, and allowing surveillance of foreigners suspected of terrorist activity but who are not affiliated with a terrorist organization. Both left and right oppose the provisions, but solid majorities are likely to back them amid the growing threat from the Islamic State extremist group. Obama signed a four-year extension in 2011.
The Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage to millions of children in low-income families, expires Sept. 30. There's pressure to renew it before then because state legislatures are drafting their budgets for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1 in most places.
Information for this article was contributed by Kimberly Hefling, Donna Cassata, Erica Werner and Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; by Lisa Mascaro and Michael A. Memoli of Tribune News Service; and by Billy House of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 03/02/2015