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President Trump fired shots across the bow of his own party’s efforts to avert a government shutdown on Thursday, blasting Republican leadership’s decision to include funding for a popular children’s health insurance program.
The GOP-drafted bill would fund the government until Feb. 16 and allow for more time for both parties to hammer out the details of an immigration deal.
Republicans attached a six year extension to the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, as a way to pressure Democrats into approving the bill.
On Wednesday, the White House officially endorsed the stopgap measure and the CHIP extension.
But on Thursday morning, Trump seemed set on scuttling negotiations.
“CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!” Trump tweeted.
Government funding is slated to run out at midnight Friday.
Trump also said that Democrats were itching for a shutdown to take the wind out of the President’s sails following his successful passage of the GOP-backed tax overhaul.
“They’ve been so good that the Democrats would like to see a shutdown in order to get off that subject,” he said during a visit to a Pennsylvania factory.
House Speaker Paul Ryan muddied the already unclear waters in Washington by insisting that the President backs the interim bill.
“He fully supports passing this legislation,” Ryan said. “I didn’t see what he wrote. I spoke with the President. He supports passing what we’re bringing to the floor today.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pooh-poohed the use of CHIP as a bargaining tool.
“This is like giving you a bowl of doggy doo, put a cherry on top, and call it a chocolate sundae,” she said. “This is nothing. This CHIP should have been done in September.”
The House wound up passing the measure by a near party-line 230-197 vote.
GOP leaders were able to push the bill across the finish line after House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) backed the measure after winning unknown assurances from Ryan on a separate military bill. But Senate Democrats said they have the numbers to block the bill.
Republicans would need 13 Democrats to cross party lines to pass the legislation in the Senate.
Dems insist that any deal contain a long-term fix to protect immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
Trump ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allowing undocumented immigrants to work and go to school without fear of deportation last year. The President shot down a bipartisan immigration deal last week and has called for funding for his proposed Mexican border wall to be part of any package.
“There is a bipartisan budget deal on the table, but @realDonaldTrump won’t take yes for an answer,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted Thursday.
Benjamin Page, a political science professor at Northwestern University, believes Trump intentionally tied immigration to the budget as a “smokescreen designed to conceal the GOP drive to cut social programs.”
But Trump accused Democrats of putting the military at risk by threatening to not back the stopgap bill.
“The group that loses big would be the military and we’re never letting our military lose at any point,” Trump said while visiting the Pentagon earlier Thursday. “We are going to fund our military. We’re going to have a military like we’ve never had before because we’ve just about, just about never needed our military more than now.”
Trump’s oft-repeated mantra about the military makes little sense as service members are considered essential personnel and would still report for duty.
But pay, including for troops in combat, could be suspended during a partial shutdown.