Congress voted overwhelmingly Friday to keep federal agencies open for another week, defying President Donald Trump's desire for action on both a border wall and health-care legislation by focusing on what lawmakers viewed as the greater priority - avoiding a government shutdown.
But the sense of accomplishment may be short-lived: With several unresolved differences remaining, lawmakers planned to work through the weekend to finalize a longer-term deal that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year in September.
"We're willing to extend things for a little bit more time in hopes that the same sort of progress can be made," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday morning.
Meanwhile, White House and conservative House Republicans continued to press for a health-care vote as early as next week, which could threaten budget talks just as they did this week.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., plans to continue working to convince skeptical Republicans to back a health-care revision that he helped author. Meadows said Friday that he had wanted the House to pass measure before Trump marked his 100th day in office on Saturday, but that he continues to push for a vote as soon as next week.
"If it takes another couple of days, so be it," Meadows told reporters. "I don't think it has to be voted on next week, I certainly would be disappointed if it weren't." On Friday morning, proponents of the measure continued to press for support.
House GOP leaders announced late Thursday that there would be no vote on health-care legislation Friday, despite the efforts of Meadows and the White House. Leaving a 90-minute meeting in the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said the main focus of the huddle was to ensure that the one-week funding bill would pass - and he denied that leaders had ever wanted to vote by Friday.
"We're still educating members," he said. "We've been making great progress. As soon as we have the votes, we'll vote on it."
Top staff and leaders on both chambers' appropriations committees had tried late Thursday to reach a longer agreement to keep government open through the end of the fiscal year, in September, but were unable to resolve differences on several unrelated policy measures that have plagued the process since the beginning, according to several congressional aides familiar with the talks.
The failure to revive the health-care bill was yet another blow to Trump as he neared the 100-day mark on Friday. While congressional leaders in both parties focused primarily on the budget, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other top administration officials launched dual attempts to pressure Republican lawmakers into a new agreement to revise the Affordable Care Act.
In recent weeks, Trump plowed into health-care negotiations not only by wooing members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus but also by trying to forge a bond with Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., the co-chairman of the moderate Tuesday Group. He was the only moderate represented in the recent talks.
Instead of delving into details, MacArthur and Trump would often talk about the president's late father, Fred, whose black-and-white portrait sits alone on a desk in the Oval Office.
"I knew his father for many years and have handled his insurance," MacArthur, a former insurance executive, said. "Fred had thousands of apartments in Brooklyn and I'd go out with him to settle claims, sitting in the back of the car with him and talking."
Trump also relished stories of "Fred and I getting sandwiches," MacArthur added. "I told him I saw that same decisive way, the same humor."
By last weekend, an amendment crafted by MacArthur to give states flexibility over insurance regulations and mandated categories of coverage became the crux of the White House's deal with the Tuesday Group and the Freedom Caucus, with MacArthur at the center.
MacArthur said there is more of Fred in Trump than people realize: "He reached out again and again, in determination."
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a senior member of the Freedom Caucus, said Pence also has been crucial in keeping the relationship between the White House and that conservative bloc strong in the wake of the health-care bill falling apart last month. "I don't know how many meetings I've had with him," Jordan said. "It's been unbelievable."
Jordan said Pence, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price - all former House GOP lawmakers - and longtime House aide Paul Teller, who now works at the White House, have been working constantly the Freedom Caucus for the last two weeks, often bypassing House Republican leadership as they've worked to revise the bill to his caucus's liking. "We've talked and talked, and they've talked with Mark Meadows," the HFC chairman, "every day."
Jordan said Trump has concentrated on working Meadows while Pence has been more in touch with Jordan and other members.
"There was a while where the vice president was on Capitol Hill every day and over the recess, they've been keeping up with everybody by phone. Remember, the vice president was someone who was a mentor to many of us, he knows the House."
But the stalled talks demonstrated yet again how divided Republicans remain about how to overhaul Obamacare, despite seven years of GOP promises to repeal and replace the 2010 law. Conservatives and moderates have repeatedly clashed over the contours of such a revamp, most sharply over bringing down insurance premiums in exchange for limiting the kind of coverage that is required to be offered.
As many as 15 or so House Republicans have said that they will not support the latest GOP proposal. That leaves Ryan and the White House an incredibly narrow path for passage. The speaker can lose only 22 Republicans on a health-care vote because Democrats have fiercely opposed any attempt to repeal the current health care law.