Democrats seek to advance spending plans as government shutdown looms – live

According to Politico, House minority whip Steve Scalise said this morning that Republican leadership will be encouraging members to vote against Democrats’ government spending bill.

If all House Republicans oppose the bill, then nearly every Democrat in the chamber will need to support it in order to get it passed.

And those hurdles will come before the bill heads over to the evenly divided Senate, where it currently has no path to the 60 votes needed for passage.

Congresswoman Rose DeLauro, the Democratic chairwoman of the House appropriations committee, said the spending bill “meets the continuing needs of people who live paycheck to paycheck”.

“It is critical that Congress swiftly pass this legislation to support critical education, health, housing and public safety programs and provide emergency help for disaster survivors and Afghan evacuees,” DeLauro said in a statement.

Noting that the bill includes funds for relocating Afghan refugees and responding to natural disasters, DeLauro added, “By extending funding through December 3, this legislation will allow Congress to negotiate full-year government funding bills that make historic and transformative investments to benefit working families. As we take that step today, providing help for people in desperate need is a moral imperative.”

The House appropriations committee has released the text of a bill to keep the government funded past the end of the month and raise the debt ceiling.

If enacted, the bill would continue government funding through December 3 and suspend the debt ceiling until December 16.

The legislation would also invest $28.6bn in natural disaster response and $6.3bn in efforts to relocate Afghan refugees.

However, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to oppose any effort to raise the debt ceiling, so it remains unclear how this bill could make it through the upper chamber.

The blog will have more details coming up. Stay tuned.

Democrats are trying to put pressure on Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell over his insistence that Republicans will not help raise the debt ceiling.

“Two years ago, @LeaderMcConnell said: ‘America can’t default. That would be a disaster.’ Yet, now he and @SenateGOP are trying to force the first-ever default of the U.S.,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Twitter.

“All Members must come together in a spirit of bipartisanship to protect the full faith and credit of the U.S.”

But McConnell has somewhat of a notorious history for not giving in to pressure campaigns, with his handling of supreme court openings likely being the most famous example of that.

And so far, McConnell has given no indication of softening his position on the debt ceiling, even though Democrats helped Republicans raise the debt ceiling while Donald Trump was president.

The intraparty arguments over Democrats’ $3.5tn reconciliation package have raised concerns that the bill, which is considered the lynchpin of Joe Biden’s economic agenda, could fail.

Politico reports:

Moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) continue to be a major headache for party leadership’s $3.5 trillion target. The Senate parliamentarian just nixed the party’s yearslong push to enact broad immigration reform. House members may tank the prescription drugs overhaul the party has run on for years. And a fight continues to brew over Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) push to expand Medicare.

‘If any member of Congress is not concerned that this could fall apart, they need treatment,’ said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who warned his party ‘will pay for it at the polls’ if it fails in enacting Biden’s agenda. ‘Our caucus has the feeling of freedom to support or oppose leadership.’

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Congressional Democrats are trying to put out fires on multiple fronts as they seek to simultaneously advance their economic agenda and avoid a government shutdown.

Democratic leaders are scrambling to get both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5tn reconciliation package to Joe Biden’s desk.

However, progressive lawmakers have threatened to torpedo the infrastructure bill unless they receive guarantees that the reconciliation package will also pass, while moderate Democrats are demanding that the reconciliation package be scaled down.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders are also trying to avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, essentially daring Republicans to help them do so.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has insisted that Republicans will not help Democrats with increasing the debt ceiling, even though the two parties acted together to raise the debt ceiling during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Democrats are pairing a government spending proposal and a debt ceiling suspension in one bill, meaning the US could face a government shutdown and an economic catastrophe if Republicans follow through on McConnell’s threat.

Negotiations over all of those proposals will continue today on Capitol Hill. Stay tuned.