WASHINGTON — In their latest bid to avoid a government shutdown, House Republican leaders are trying to move forward with a new plan that would keep the government funded into January while kicking fights over issues like immigration and surveillance into the new year.
The latest plan from Republican leaders would extend government funding until Jan. 19 while also providing a short-term funding fix for the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, whose financing lapsed in October.
After the House and Senate succeeded in passing a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul this week, the stopgap bill includes language to prevent automatic spending cuts that would be required to offset the tax bill's effect on the deficit.
Republicans also want to approve $81 billion in additional disaster aid in response to this year's hurricanes and wildfires, funding that could be approved as a separate bill before lawmakers leave for the holidays.
Government funding currently runs through Friday, and with less than 48 hours to go, it remained up in the air on Thursday whether Republican leaders would be able to find the votes they need to avert a crisis. The short-term punt has angered members of both parties. Many Republicans are frustrated with the current level of funding for the military, and many Democrats were eager for a fight over protections for young immigrants brought illegally to the country as children.
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The House package also provides minimal funding, $2.85 billion, for the children's health program, leaving state administrators and health advocates anxious.
"I do not think this is anywhere close to enough money," said Bruce Lesley, the president of First Focus, a child advocacy group. "For a $12 billion to $14 billion program, this provides less than $3 billion for what is effectively six months" — the first half of the 2018 fiscal year, which began in October.
President Trump weighed in on Twitter on Thursday morning, accusing Democrats of wanting a government shutdown in order to take attention away from the tax overhaul.
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Dec. 21, 2017
But on Capitol Hill, the big question is whether enough Republicans would support the stopgap spending bill in the House in order to pass it.
Representative Alcee L. Hastings, Democrat of Florida, read Mr. Trump's tweet aloud at a House committee meeting on Thursday morning and said that he knows no Democrat or Republican who wants to shut the government down. Mr. Trump, he said, needs to put his Twitter account "under his pillow and sleep on it rather than continue to divide this country the way that he has."
An earlier iteration of the measure would have provided long-term funding for the Defense Department, and some Republicans in the House have grown impatient as they seek to raise military spending. Defense hawks worry that a military buildup this fiscal year would be difficult if a real spending plan is not approved until at least a third of the way through fiscal 2018.
House Democrats have shown no willingness to support a stopgap measure as they push for other priorities, including securing a deal to shield young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation. They will have to wait until at least January for action on that issue.
As Republicans try to overcome their internal divisions, Democrats complained that Congress was lurching from one crisis to the next, with a stack of big issues still unresolved, including a long-term spending deal.
"Hanukkah just came to a close, we are four days from Christmas, and we are nine days from the end of the year, and much of the work that this Congress needs to do is undone," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip.
If the House can succeed in passing the stopgap bill on Thursday, the Senate would need to approve it to avert a shutdown this weekend. And that would almost certainly take Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to cut off debate.
The stopgap bill provides money for CHIP and community health centers through March 31. And it directs the secretary of health and human services to distribute leftover CHIP funds to states with the most urgent financial problems so they do not have to shut down the program.
Republicans saw the $2.85 billion for CHIP as the minimum they had to provide to avert a funding crisis in the program — far less than the five years of funds that congressional leaders of both parties had promised.
It is unclear whether funds in the stopgap spending bill will be adequate. Some states had already begun to inform parents that their children could lose coverage early next year if Congress did not act. The bill does not provide the certainty that state officials had been seeking.
Leaders of both parties in the House and the Senate support legislation to provide five years of funds for CHIP, but they have been unable to agree on how to pay for it. The standoff over CHIP is remarkable because the program has had strong bipartisan support since it was created 20 years ago, when Bill Clinton was president and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
It also comes after the Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax measure with little effort to pay for it.
The stopgap bill would also extend through Jan. 19 a statute that provides the legal basis for the National Security Agency and F.B.I.'s warrantless surveillance program, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which is set to expire on Dec. 31. Congress will have to return to the issue of whether to impose new privacy safeguards on that program as part of a longer-term extension.
The stopgap extension is largely symbolic: Even if the statute were to lapse on New Year's Eve, the executive branch believes the surveillance program has legal authority to continue operating through late April, when a current set of court orders approving it expire, and officials have said the N.S.A. and F.B.I. will not to turn it off on Jan. 1 regardless of what happens.
The bill also includes $2.1 billion to prop up the Veterans Choice program, which pays for veterans facing barriers to care within the government's health system to get outside help. Lawmakers have been trying for months — thus far, unsuccessfully — to reach an agreement to permanently reform and fund the program, and a funding extension would buy them more time.
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