Negotiators make progress on bill to keep government open
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional and White House negotiators made progress Tuesday on a must-pass spending bill to keep the federal government open days ahead of a deadline as President Donald Trump indicated that U.S. funding for a border wall with Mexico could wait until September.
"We're moving forward on reaching an agreement on a bipartisan basis," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters, adding that he hoped that an agreement to fund the government through September can be reached in the next few days.
But a big stumbling block remains, involving a Democratic demand for money for insurance companies that help low-income people afford health policies under former President Barack Obama's health law, or that Trump abandon a threat to use the payments as a bargaining chip. Trump's apparent flexibility on the U.S.-Mexico wall issue, however, seemed to steer the Capitol Hill talks on the catchall spending measure in a positive direction.
Republicans are also vetting proposed changes to their beleaguered health care bill that they hope will attract enough votes to finally push it through the House.
Both efforts come with Congress back from a two-week break just days before Trump's 100th day in office, an unofficial measuring stick of a new president's effectiveness. With little to show in legislative victories so far, the Trump administration would love to claim achievements on Capitol Hill by that day - this Saturday.
The same day, federal agencies would have to close unless lawmakers pass a $1 trillion spending bill financing them or legislation keeping them open temporarily while talks continue. Republicans hope to avoid the ignominy of a government shutdown while their party controls Congress and the White House.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday that administration negotiators including Trump's budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, "feel very confident" that a shutdown won't occur.
Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass the budget measure, had a less charitable version of negotiations. In a conference call with reporters aimed at criticizing Trump's first 100 days as ineffective, party leaders said the biggest shutdown threat was from Trump's demand that the spending bill include funds for the barricade along the Mexican border.
That threat appeared to be easing Monday evening when Trump told reporters from conservative media that he would be willing to return to the funding issue in September. Two people in the room described his comments to The Associated Press.
Those comments represented a retreat from just last week, when Mulvaney said getting money for Trump's wall in the budget bill was one of the administration's "priorities."
Nonetheless, Trump tweeted Tuesday, "Don't let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., approved of Trump's apparent shift. "The president's comments this evening are welcome news given the bipartisan opposition to the wall, and the obstacle it has been to the continuing bipartisan negotiations in the appropriations committees," she said in a statement late Monday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "It's good for the country that President Trump is taking the wall off the table in these negotiations." Both Democratic leaders had criticized Trump earlier Monday.
Trump had told supporters Mexico would pay for the wall, but with Mexico refusing to foot the bill he now wants Congress to make a down payment. The wall's cost estimates range past $20 billion. Republicans are seeking an initial $1.4 billion in the spending bill.
Separately, the White House and congressional Republicans are gauging whether a plan to revise the GOP's stalled health care bill would garner enough converts to rekindle hopes for House passage of the legislation.
Their initial bill would repeal some coverage requirements under Obama's law, offer skimpier subsidies for consumers to buy care and roll back a Medicaid expansion. GOP leaders avoided a planned House vote last month, which would have failed due to opposition from GOP moderates and conservatives alike.
The proposed changes would retain several requirements imposed by Obama's 2010 statute, including obliging insurers to cover seriously ill customers.
But states could obtain federal waivers to some of those requirements. Those include mandates that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same premiums and cover specified services like hospitalization and emergency room visits.
Supporters say the proposal is significant because it would retain guaranteed coverage for people with costly illnesses. Critics say it would effectively weaken that assurance because insurers in states getting waivers could charge sky-high rates.
Those waivers may not help win moderate support. They have opposed the underlying GOP bill because of its cuts in Medicaid and to federal subsidies Obama's law provides many people buying individual policies.
___
Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.