Donald Trump and Barack Obama. Win McNamee/Getty Images With a little less than 48 hours to go until the bill funding the federal government expires, lawmakers are scrambling to come up with a plan to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.

The spending bill, however, will likely be a source of horse-trading as Democrats and Republicans attempt to fit their own political goals in the package.

One of the biggest desires of Democrats was to include funding for a key part of Obamacare, called cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, into the new continuing resolution.

Republicans would rather leave these payments out, as they would likely take a toll on Obamacare's individual insurance market and are an added expenditure.

CSR payments go to insurers to help defray the cost of offering plans to low-income Americans. Without the roughly $8 billion in annual payments, many health-policy experts have said the marketplaces would see a flood of insurer exits and steeper price increases for Americans getting insurance through the marketplaces.

Currently, these payments are being made by the White House instead of Congressional appropriation. Politico reported on Wednesday that the White House agreed to continue to fund the CSR payments as it has been doing, apparently clearing the way for a deal on the shutdown.

Democratic sources told Politico, however, that the White House had not committed to funding the CSR payments past next month, which may hang up the preliminary agreement between the White House and Democratic leaders.

Additionally, a Democratic aide told Business Insider later on Wednesday that Democrats "still hope to secure language in the omnibus to continue the payments" but was not able to predict the outcome of the debate.

On Thursday, Trump stoked the flames that the CSR debate may not be over, tweeting, "The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!"

This echoed a nearly identical tweet on Wednesday night.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also pushed back on the inclusion of CSRs at a press conference on Wednesday, saying that the bill would not include these payments. "CSRs, we're not doing that," Ryan said.

Technically, due to Republicans' solid majority in the House, they do not need Democratic votes to pass the bill through the lower chamber, but Democrats could filibuster any legislation in the Senate. Thus, Democrats have some leverage to try and get the CSR payments included.

The trouble with a short-term commitment from the White House is that CSR payments are the subject of a lawsuit between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Department of Health and Human Services that dates back to the Obama administration.

The House argued the program was illegal since the funds were not appropriated by Congress. A judge ruled in Congress' favor in 2016, but an appeal started by the Obama administration is still pending.

What is not clear, however, is whether the Trump administration will continue with the lawsuit. If the lawsuit is dropped by the administration, the lower court ruling would stand and this would effectively end the CSR payments.

Getting the CSR payments in the spending bill would be one way around the legal concerns of the lawsuit since they would be officially appropriated.