Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is set to meet with President Trump on Thursday amid a stalemate on how to fund the government past late November.
Shelby told reporters he is heading to the White House Thursday afternoon to try to end the impasse over how to move fiscal 2020 bills.
{mosads}“We’ll talks about approps. Where we are, how can we move, what’s it going to take,” Shelby said. “I’m just going to discuss … the merits of moving all our bills.”
Asked what his top priorities were, Shelby added that it was “how do we get off the dime. How do we get our job done and fund the government.”
The White House powwow comes as the Senate is expected to vote on a stopgap bill as soon as Thursday that will fund the government through Nov. 21.
But the chamber has yet to pass any of the 12 bills that are needed to fund the government after the stopgap runs out and through Sep. 30, 2020.
Republicans wanted to move legislation last week that would have funded defense; Health and Human Services, Labor and education; State and foreign operations, and energy and water.
But Democrats blocked that from moving amid a fight over defense spending and top-line numbers for the 12 appropriations bills.