It Is Happening Every Day, Every Where
The stopgap measure the G.O.P. is pushing to avert a government shutdown omits billions of dollars in member-requested projects, another way in which Congress has ceded its power on federal spending.
On spending, oversight and other issues, Republican lawmakers have willingly ceded power traditionally reserved for Congress to the Trump White House.
The top Senate Democrat said his members were not ready to provide the votes to allow the Republican-written stopgap spending measure to pass ahead of a March 14 midnight deadline.
Representative Keith Self of Texas insisted on calling Representative Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress, “Mr. McBride,” and adjourned the session when challenged about it.
House G.O.P. leaders tucked the provision into a procedural measure needed to pass a government spending bill.
Republicans were pressing rank-and-file lawmakers to fall in line behind a stopgap measure that would mostly keep government funding at current levels through September.
Progressive and moderate Democrats criticized a protest by Representative Al Green as a distraction, and the party leadership tried to refocus attention on economic issues.
Democrats decried the measure as a White House power grab, leaving it unclear whether the legislation could pass.
Republicans are pitching the strategy as a way of avoiding a politically damaging shutdown fight while giving President Trump more power to go around Congress and set funding levels himself.
Ten members of his party joined Republicans in voting to officially condemn the Texas Democrat after he was ejected from the president’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday. Mr. Green voted “present.”