Why chances of a shutdown could be growing

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have a little more than two months to reach a deal on funding the government to prevent a shutdown, and worries are rising that they might fail to do so.

It is highly unlikely that Congress will complete work on its 12 annual spending bills by the end of September, making it likelier that lawmakers will have to pass a stopgap continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government from closing.

Such CRs are usually agreed to buy time for a bigger deal, but there are plenty of reasons to think Republicans in the House and Democrats in the Senate will fail to come to an agreement this time.

Lawmakers themselves are not exactly expressing optimism.

“We’re gonna have a government shutdown because we’re gonna fight between the House and Senate about appropriations,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said when asked about the outlook of the funding battle.

“We are going to scare the hell out of you,” he said. “We’re really good at that.”

Here are a few reasons why a shutdown might be on the horizon.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans is widening

Republican and Democrats in Congress and the White House reached a deal months ago to raise the debt ceiling and set spending limits for the next fiscal year.

Theoretically, that should have increased the chances of avoiding a shutdown.

Instead, the deal angered conservative Republicans, who are now demanding spending bills be set below the levels of the debt ceiling deal. That is a big problem for Democrats in the House and the Senate.

Meanwhile, Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) drew attention last week when she announced a deal with Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on the panel, that actually added $13.7 billion in additional emergency funding on top of their appropriations bills. The deal included $8 billion for defense programs and $5.7 billion for nondefense programs.

Conservatives in the House want lower spending ceilings than the debt limit deal, and they also argue that the emergency funding should count toward the total.

“As our nation faces $32 trillion in debt, this will only worsen our already dire financial situation. We need to shrink Washington, grow America,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) tweeted in response to the Murray-Collins agreement.

Collins defended the proposal in response to criticism from a Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.).

“Let's be clear: Emergency spending does not break the debt limit agreement,” she said.

Internal divisions

Republicans in the House face their own internal divisions that could make reaching a deal more difficult — and a shutdown more likely.

The first step for the House GOP is to get individual bills through the House in mostly party-line votes, which would give the conference additional leverage for a deal with the Senate.

While the bills are moving through the Appropriations Committee in the House, they face an uncertain future on the floor.

Hard-line conservatives have called on leadership to hold floor consideration of the funding bills until appropriators report out all of the 12 bills to the chamber. 

Some conservatives have also taken issue with their party's negotiators repurposing clawed back funding for Democratic priorities in the GOP spending bills. While conservatives support pulling back the funding — a move known as a rescission — they oppose using the dollars to plus up allocations even further, and hard-liners say doing so would allow for spending above fiscal 2022 levels.

“You're going to hear that we have made rescissions to get down to the number that you heard, the $1.471 [trillion],” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) said Tuesday at a press conference held by the House Freedom Caucus.

“But then those rescissions are going to be added back later. Watch for it. That should not happen,” he said. “If we go down to the $1.471 [trillion], we stay there.”

The clock is running

Congress is running out of time.

Lawmakers are set to go on recess at the end of the week and won't be back until September, which will leave just 12 legislative deals to ward off a shutdown at the end of that month.

That makes a CR all the more likely.

“I think getting a full-year appropriations deal before Sept. 30 is obviously what Congress should be doing,” Andrew Lautz, a senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said Tuesday. “But it does not appear to be realistic at this point.”

While some conservatives have downplayed the chances of a government shutdown — “I don't believe that you're looking at a government shutdown,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told reporters Tuesday — others seem to brush off the importance of avoiding one.

“What would happen if Republicans for once stare down the Democrats, and we're the ones who refuse to cave and to betray the American people and the trust they put in us when they gave us a majority?” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) told reporters Tuesday.

“So, we don't fear a government shutdown."