House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that lawmakers are “very close” to a stop-gap funding announcement to avert a government shutdown. But, behind the scenes, bipartisan discussions are at an impasse as disagreements over the length of the spending bill as well as partisan fights over election security money, the census and funding for a farm loan program remain key sticking points.
Projecting optimism, Pelosi said during an interview on Bloomberg TV when asked about the status of government funding talks, “We’re not ready to make an announcement right this minute, but we are very close to one.”
She acknowledged, however, that lawmakers have not yet come to an agreement on the length of the stop-gap measure. “That is a question that we are still negotiating,” she said when asked if the bill will extend until December or go past that.
The tentative goal had been to strike a bipartisan agreement on the spending bill by this afternoon to keep the government funded beyond September 30, but little progress has been made in the last 24 hours.
Pelosi said Friday, “We hope to have it today so that we can bring it to the floor early next week and then go to the Senate, which usually takes a bit longer in terms of their process, so that by the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30, there will be no question that government will be open.”
There are still 12 days before the deadline for the expiration of government funding, which leaves plenty of time for congressional negotiations to progress from this point, but key issues still have yet to be resolved.
One issue has been that Democrats want a continuing resolution to go to February, when there is a chance Democrats will have won the White House or the Senate. Republicans are looking for a shorter-term continuing resolution to run through mid-December.
Additionally, Republicans argue that without raising the borrowing authority of the Commodities Credit Corporations, farmers experiencing losses this year will cease getting more payments in the new fiscal year. And at this point, Republicans are dug in.
“Speaker Pelosi is so out of touch with flyover country that she’s essentially telling our nation’s farmers to ‘drop dead’ by withholding funding for this critical program,” a senior GOP Senate leadership aide told CNN this afternoon.
Democrats, meanwhile, are holding firm on their demands for $3.6 billion in election security funding and a four-month extension of the census.
GOP and Democratic aides familiar with negotiations said it is still possible that a bipartisan deal could still come together later Friday, but noted that it would be a heavy lift at this point.
“Quite frankly, most of the language we agree on. The language is baked on it. Theoretically if something breaks on these last remaining issues. It can be done quickly,” one GOP aide said.
One option is that House Democrats could introduce their own continuing resolution later today, but a Democratic aide cautioned that the goal at this point is to still iron out a bipartisan deal.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has said his goal is to have the House vote on the stop-gap measure next week.
