House passes funding bill to stave off shutdown, buy 5 days for deal

The House beat a midnight deadline Friday and passed a bill to fund the government for five more days, giving negotiators daylight to finalize a $1.1 trillion deal to fund federal agencies for one year and avert a holiday-season shutdown.

President Obama plans to sign the short-term extension, which passed through the Senate Thursday and breezed through the House by a voice vote.

Mr. Obama’s patience is wearing thin, though, as Congress struggles to hammer out the final text of the catch-all, “omnibus” funding bill and a separate deal on tax breaks for businesses and individuals. Under the latest extension, they have until Wednesday to make it happen and avoid a shutdown.

“Congress has had ample time to negotiate this agreement,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday, saying yet another extension of weeks or months would be unacceptable.

“I haven’t been in Washington very long, but I have been in Washington long enough to know, that without a deadline, Congress doesn’t do anything,” he said.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday he expects the House to complete its work next week, so it wouldn’t need another extension.

Negotiators are trying to cut through policy add-ons, or “riders,” that wouldn’t pass as standalone legislation but could sneak through as part of the must-pass spending bill.

Democrats said GOP riders that attack Mr. Obama’s environmental agenda, change campaign-finance rules or roll back Wall Street regulations established after the 2008 financial crisis amount to “poison pills” that have no place in a spending bill.

“You don’t bring government to the brink of a shutdown over policy disagreements,” Rep. Jared Polis, Colorado Democrat, said.

Party leaders also criticized a parallel effort to renew tax breaks known as “extenders,” saying it puts breaks for corporations ahead of ones for families, without paying for it.

“I don’t see very much support on the Democratic side for the tax-extender bill,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.

Republicans say they tried to fund the government in a methodical, thoughtful way — passing a fiscal 2016 budget and then working through a dozen appropriations bills — only to see Democrats thwart the process over spending levels.

With majorities in both chambers, conservatives feel they ought to extract some policy wins after they supported a budget framework struck in October, shortly before then-Speaker John A. Boehner handed the keys to Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican.

“The Democrats got the spending they wanted,” said Rep. John Fleming, Louisiana Republican and member of the House Freedom Caucus, an influential bloc of conservatives. “I would think in exchange for that we would be getting the policy riders.”

Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican, said policy riders are nothing new, and that both sides will have to stomach provisions they don’t like.

“There’s obviously give-and-take on these things,” he said.

Democrats believe they have the upper hand, however, figuring Mr. Ryan cannot cobble together a majority from among his own divided GOP caucus and he will eventually have to ask for Democrats’ help.

Mrs. Pelosi said one way to win their hearts would be to end the ban on federal research into the causes of gun violence.

“I think it’s a gift to them to say, ’You want our votes, here is a way to get them,’” she said.