Boehner to Side with Dems to Avert Government Shutdown

By Chad Pergram, Fox News

Another potential government shutdown could loom if Congress isn’t able to scramble soon and cobble together a big omnibus spending bill to keep the government open past Dec. 16.

The current stopgap measure expires then. And only three of the 12 annual spending bills which run the federal government have been approved and signed into law.

That means House and Senate appropriators are putting together a massive, omnibus spending bill which they hope to have prepared by Dec. 15. This would not be an interim bill, better known in Capitol Hill-ese as a Continuing Resolution, or CR, which funds government in increments while the regular appropriations bills are negotiated.

This would simply allocate money for the remainder of currently unfunded government programs through Sept. 30, 2012. I am told that House appropriators are resistent to attaching any extraneous issues to this omnibus bill … such as unemployment insurance (UI), a payroll tax holiday, the alternative minimum tax (AMT) or the “doc fix” for Medicare.

What is significant here is that House Speaker John Boehner and GOP appropriators are turning their attention away from conservative Republicans who want to cut spending more and are insisting on a host of social riders in the spending bills, such as defunding health care reform, slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and National Labor Relations Board, eliminating aid for Pakistan and abortion.

Boehner, R-Ohio, knows that he can’t sate his conservative base in the House any more when it comes to these issues. So he may be willing to punt and team with Democrats to keep the government open