WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders reached agreement this morning on a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government running through mid-February, though a temporary shutdown was still possible with some Senate Republicans holding out over the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates for some workers.
The House was expected to take up the spending measure later in the day. It would extend spending to Feb. 18, keeping it at current levels, though $7 billion is included to support Afghanistan evacuees.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had been pushing for the legislation to cover a much shorter time period, but Republicans were insistent that more time was needed to work out differences on a spending bill covering the entire fiscal year.
“The end date is February 18. While I wish it were earlier, this agreement allows the appropriations process to move forward toward a final funding agreement which addresses the needs of the American people,” DeLauro said in a statement.
If the House approves the measure, as expected, the bill would then be considered by the Senate for passage ahead of a midnight Friday deadline. But conservative Republicans opposed to Biden’s vaccine rules want Congress to take a hardline stand against the mandated shots, even if it means shutting down federal offices over the weekend.
One GOP senator after another left a private lunch meeting Wednesday voicing concern they will be blamed for even a short stoppage of the federal government that will not play well with the public. In the Senate, any single senator can hold up proceedings to stall a vote.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats are prepared to support the funding bill and urged Republicans not to engage in shutdown politics.
“Our Republican colleagues, meanwhile, can either work with us to move the process quickly through the chamber, or they can engage in obstructive tactics that will make a government shutdown almost a certainty,” said Schumer, D-N.Y.
Political backlash over the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandates has been building for months. The White House sees the vaccinations as the quickest way to end the pandemic that has claimed more than 780,000 deaths in the U.S. Wednesday sparked fresh fears, with the country’s first detected case of a troubling new variant. During the last government shutdown battle in September, Republicans also tried to halt the vaccine mandate.
As the political arguments mount over slapping vaccine requirements on some groups of workers, so too have legal challenges. Courts have been knocking back the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates — including a ruling this week blocking enforcement of a requirement for some health care workers.
For some Republicans, the court cases, along with their own worries about a potentially disruptive government shutdown, are shifting them away from engaging in a high-stakes shutdown.
“One of the things I’m a little concerned about is: Why would we make ourselves the object of public attention by creating the specter of a government shutdown?” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a party leader.
On Wednesday, one Republican, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, made the case to his colleagues to link the effort to halt the vaccine mandates to the spending bill during a private lunch meeting at the Capitol.
The idea is to have the Senate vote to strip funding from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to implement the Biden administration’s requirement that private employers with 100 or more workers ensure they are vaccinated or regularly tested, senators said.
Lee appears to have backing from a few senators and hardline Republicans in the House. “This is a chance to correct a wrong,” said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who launched a similar effort against vaccine mandates during the last government funding battle.
But among most other Republican senators, enthusiasm for a shutdown ran thin.
