Boehner ‘confident’ stopgap will pass despite GOP pushback

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday he is “confident” the House will pass a new three-week funding bill cutting $6 billion in spending, despite swelling opposition from conservatives demanding deeper savings.

“I understand that some of our members want to do more, but what in this bill do they disagree with? Nothing. Nothing,” Boehner said after the House GOP’s weekly closed-door conference meeting. “And so … I’m confident this bill will pass.”

{mosads}At least a dozen Republicans, including Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and former GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.), have said they will oppose the continuing resolution (CR) when it comes to the floor Tuesday afternoon.

In the absence of a deal on a longer-term spending measure, another temporary one is needed to avert a government shutdown after Friday, when the current stopgap expires.

Just two lawmakers stood to oppose the continuing resolution during the conference meeting, according to attendees of the hour-long session, but the number of Republican “no” votes on the latest stopgap is expected to be higher than on the measure passed earlier this month.

That spending bill passed 335-91.

Five Senate Republicans have also said they would oppose the House’s latest CR.

“While attempts at new spending reductions are commendable, we simply can no longer afford to nickel-and-dime our way out of the dangerous debt America has amassed,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Tea Party-backed freshman, wrote at conservative blog RedState.

Other conservatives have complained that the House measure does not defund Planned Parenthood or the Democrats’ healthcare law.

“We need to stop sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, and we need to defund ObamaCare,” Jordan said in a statement this week.

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), who plans to vote against the measure, told The Hill he thinks it will pass but could require Democratic support to do so.

Boehner tossed the ball into the Senate’s court on negotiations for a longer-term measure to fund the government through Sept. 30, when the fiscal year ends.

He said the House passed its version, cutting a total of $61 billion from current spending over seven months, more than three weeks ago. The Senate, he pointed out, has yet to pass any plan.

The Senate last week rejected the House GOP version and a Democratic-leadership-backed proposal to cut a total of about $10 billion.

“Why can’t the Senate show us what they are capable of producing? I don’t know what that number is. When we get that number, we’ll have a better opportunity to have real negotiations and a real conference on cutting spending,” Boehner said.

Asked if he had spoken with President Obama about the matter, Boehner said hasn’t in “a number of weeks.”

Boehner explained that negotiators had been sent to Capitol Hill on behalf of the White House to discuss moving forward to break the impasse on the long-term funding measure.

Jordan Fabian, Michael O’Brien and Erik Wasson contributed. 

This story was first published at 10:58 a.m.