“Last night, we were able to resolve our remaining differences on this package,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) announced Thursday at a meeting of more than a dozen appropriators, referring to the bill. | Al Drago/Getty Images Congress dares Trump to shut down the government in new spending deal The bill would give the president one of his top goals. But there’s a catch.

GOP leaders believe they’ve found a way to thwart President Donald Trump’s latest shutdown threats: Send him a funding bill that’s impossible to resist.

Capitol Hill leaders on Thursday announced a mammoth fiscal 2019 spending deal that achieves one of the Trump administration's top priorities — the Pentagon’s first on-time spending bill since 2008. But there’s a catch.


The same package also funds some of the government’s most sprawling agencies at levels that are billions of dollars more than Trump requested. And if Trump refuses to sign it, much of the government, including parts of the Pentagon, would shutter.

“You effectively shut down the whole government,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior appropriator, said of the funding deal he helped shape.

Spending leaders from both parties detailed the strategy for the first time Thursday, just 17 days before government spending runs out. The Senate is expected to easily approve the package next week.

Under the tactic, lawmakers will vote on a two-bill spending package that funds the Pentagon as well as health, labor and education programs. There’s also a new third component: Spending leaders said that the package will include temporary funding for every other agency facing a funding lapse on Sept. 30.

If approved, the bill would keep those government operations open until Dec. 7, about a month past the looming midterm elections.

Longtime appropriators of both parties said that strategy effectively ties the administration’s hands — forcing Trump to decide between signing a spending bill with domestic funding levels he detests, or forcing a potential funding crisis at the Pentagon.

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“The president will have to sign this bill or shut down the government, because it contains the continuing resolution,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), one of the top Democratic negotiators on the package.

Trump himself has cheered Congress’ progress on the Pentagon spending bill, which would break the military’s nearly decadelong stop-and-go funding cycle. On domestic funding, however, Trump’s deputies have chided Congress for overspending.

It’s not just Trump with complaints about the massive domestic bill. House conservatives, too, are livid about funding increases, as well as a lack of conservative policy wins at a time when the GOP controls all levels of government.

“Most of the Democrats will vote for this and smile very big,” Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters Thursday. “It’s a Democrat ‘Labor-HHS’ bill.”

The Republican Study Committee, an influential group of about 170 GOP lawmakers, also released a statement Thursday that suggested its members would be willing to oppose the upcoming package — even if it means voting against the Pentagon cash.

House GOP leaders aren’t worried about the Republican whip count, according to lawmakers and aides, in part because of the politically toxic prospect of voting against the military’s budget just weeks ahead of election day.

“If they want to vote against Defense, that’s up to them,” said Cole, the lead negotiator on the domestic package. He quoted his Democratic colleague, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) about how both parties’ negotiators decided to work together: “We can have a deal, or we can have a fight, but we can’t have both.”

Precise details on funding and language remain under wraps until the final text is rolled out. But negotiators said that the final package would largely strip out partisan language favored by House Republicans.

That means lawmakers rejected attempts to defund Planned Parenthood or destabilize Obamacare, as well as a slew of other perennial conservative riders.

“Certainly, there’s a lot of disappointments in the bill,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who was one of the GOP negotiators on the package.

Lawmakers have planned for weeks to pair the broadly popular Defense bill with the typically contentious Labor-HHS-Education bill. That unprecedented combination allowed the package to soar through the Senate for the first time in 22 years, while kick-starting formal conference negotiations on both for the first time since 2007.

Senate Appropriations chief Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), one of those to originally pitch the strategy, called it the “linchpin” of Congress' spending bill successes so far this year. “One, the top priority for Republicans; the other, the top priority for Democrats. Both important to all Americans,” Shelby said.

At the White House, asked by the press pool about the spending deal, deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters responded:

“We look forward to reviewing the bill when it’s released.”