GOP pushes a short-term spending bill, but it's not clear they can avoid a shutdown

WASHINGTON – A blur of closed-door meetings and backroom negotiations ended on Capitol Hill Wednesday with no visible progress toward an agreement to keep the government open past a Friday deadline — and zero headway in parallel talks on immigration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., seemed deeply frustrated with the lack of clarity from the White House on what bill, if any, President Trump would sign to protect a portion of the "DREAMers" from deportation. Those are the estimated 3 million young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

“As soon as we figure out what (Trump) is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels,” McConnell told reporters Wednesday. “I’m looking for something that President Trump supports. And he’s not indicated what measure he’s willing to sign.”

Those two issues — funding the government beyond Friday and extending an Obama-era program to protect some DREAMers from deportation — seem inexorably linked at this point. That’s because Democrats want the two measures to move together. Republicans don’t, but they need Democratic support to get any spending bill through the Senate. The government will run out of funding Friday if Congress fails to pass a spending bill, and Republicans are trying to push another month-long spending bill.

Talks on immigration continued Wednesday, with White House officials dispatched to meet with an array of House and Senate players, but the parties emerged to say they had only agreed that House and Senate leaders would meet again on Thursday.  

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“There’s good will but no progress,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., after meeting with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Trump’s legislative chief Marc Short.

Like McConnell, Durbin expressed frustration with what he said were unclear and ever-changing demands form the White House on the immigration front. With those talks moving at a snail’s pace, Durbin and others said there was growing opposition among Democrats to another stop-gap spending measure — not only because of the immigration issue, referred to as DACA, but also because the spending bill did not address other Democratic priorities.

“The revulsion toward that bill was broad and strong,” Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said after Senate Democrats discussed the issue during a closed-door lunch meeting. “The overwhelming number in our caucus have said they don’t like this deal and they believe if we kick the can down the road this time, we’ll be back where we started from next time.”

Schumer got an unexpected boost on Wednesday when a Republican senator — Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — said he would vote against the short-term spending measure because such temporary funding patches hurt the military.

"Eventually, you gotta say ‘no,’” Graham told reporters Wednesday. “I don’t want to shut the government down, but you know it’s killing the military. It’s the worst way in the world to run the military and the government in general."

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With Graham a “no,” Republicans will need at least 10 Democrats to join them in supporting the bill — and possibly 11 if Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is not in Washington when the vote occurs. McCain has been at home in Arizona dealing with health issues, and it’s not clear if he could be back by Friday.

But other Democrats downplayed the level of opposition to the short-term spending bill, with many saying they had not made up their minds. There are 10 Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won in 2016, all of whom are feeling the heat from Republicans who are ready to blame them if the shutdown happens.

“The president certainly doesn’t want a shutdown, and if one happens you only have one place to look, and that’s the Democrats," said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

Most centrist Democrats would not say how they intended to vote, but Jonathan Kott, spokesman for Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a state Trump won by 42 points, told USA TODAY Manchin would not vote against a short-term spending bill over immigration. 

But not everyone was sold. Montana Sen. Jon Tester — Trump won his state by 20-points — told reporters he wouldn't be voting for the bill, but "it has nothing to do with (immigration), it’s a bad proposal."

House Republican leaders said they would push ahead with a vote on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government through Feb. 16, but they did not schedule the vote and it was not clear they would have enough support to pass it.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, urged her caucus to vote against the proposal Wednesday morning.

"This is an important moment for our Caucus, standing up for what we know is right," Pelosi told Democrats, according to a copy of her remarks obtained by USA TODAY.

In the House, Republicans have a large enough majority that they can pass legislation without a single Democrat's support. However, without any Democrats' votes, Republicans can only lose a handful of GOP lawmakers — and at this point it's not clear they can stop the bleeding.

Conservatives are frustrated by a lack of clarity about what Republican leaders will accept in upcoming immigration and spending negotiations with Democrats.

On Wednesday, House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadow of North Carolina said that there are enough "no" and "undecided" votes in his hard-line conservative caucus, assuming all Democrats voted against the measure as well, that the legislation would not pass.

"They do not have the votes. Now I'm not saying that they won't have the votes, but as of today, at this particular point, they do not have the votes," Meadows said. One option that could gain conservative votes would be leadership giving "greater clarity on what we're going to do with an immigration bill and how we're going to address DACA," he added.

Contributing: Gregory Korte