Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said on Friday that the House would vote on the omnibus spending package Friday to fund the government in order to avert a shutdown and then go home until negotiations over the payroll-tax break are settled.
“The House will do its work today, the members will go home, and if there’s a need to come back to finish our work, we will do so,” Boehner said in a news conference following a closed-door Republican Caucus meeting.
The appropriations package is expected to move through the House on Friday afternoon, after Democrats on the panel agreed to sign the conference report last Thursday. Funding for federal government operations currently expires at midnight Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on Friday that the Senate is expected to vote on the funding package in the next 36 hours.
With the year coming to an end and Democrats and Republican still in disagreement over how to offset the cost of the payroll-tax break, talk in the Capitol has turned to a potential two-month extension of the tax cut. But Boehner warned Friday that he would tack controversial Keystone pipeline provisons onto any Senate attempt to do so.
“If that bill comes over to us, we will make changes to it and I will guarantee you that the Keystone pipeline will be in there when it goes back to the United States Senate,” Boehner said, repeating himself three times.
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