News article:

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence meet with House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office on Thursday. | Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images Congress clears spending bill, averting shutdown But Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on a broader budget agreement. 
  
 Congress passed a two-week funding bill Thursday, staving off a government shutdown a day ahead of the deadline. But lawmakers face a turbulent next few weeks as they try to clinch a broader budget deal by the end of the year. 
  
 Senators approved the measure on a 81-14 vote, soon after the House passed it 235-193. Despite initial reluctance from conservative House Republicans, GOP leadership was ultimately able to pass it with votes to spare. 
  
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 The more interesting action was arguably taking place across Pennsylvania Ave. 
  
 President Donald Trump met with the “Big Four” congressional leaders — Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — at the White House on Thursday afternoon in a bid to jump-start negotiations over a two-year budget deal. 
  
 Per one senior Democratic aide, the vast majority of the talks focused on spending levels, and the two parties did not come to a consensus. Democrats want parity for any defense and non-defense spending boost, while Republicans want to see the Pentagon get the bulk of any spending increase. 
  
 “We had a good meeting. We agreed to keep on talking,” McConnell said after returning from the meeting. Asked if they were any closer to a deal on spending caps, he said, “I wouldn’t say that, but it was a good meeting. Everybody wants to get to an outcome.” 
  
 “We had a productive conversation on a wide variety of issues,” Pelosi said in a statement following the meeting. “Nothing specific has been agreed to, but discussions continue.” 
  
 The group also discussed the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. GOP leaders argued the issue would have to be dealt with separately from funding the government — something many Democrats will not support. 
  
 Earlier in the day, Pelosi told reporters, "We will not leave here without a DACA fix.” 
  
 The shutdown dance comes as Republican leaders and the White House are pushing to finish work on a trillion-dollar-plus tax cut plan being hashed out by House and Senate tax writers. Ryan and McConnell are hoping to buy enough time in the budget talks to complete work on the tax bill, all while mollifying their defense hawks and conservative hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus. And that’s to say nothing of Democratic demands for a deal to help hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who face possible deportation next year, as well as a host of other controversial policy issues. 
  
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 Ahead of the meeting, a senior administration official said Trump's main push would be to keep DACA out of the budget deal, increase defense spending without boosting non-defense funding, and get Democrats to agree to allow his hugely controversial border wall project. 
  
 That, Democrats say, is a White House pipedream. During a Thursday speech on the floor, Schumer said Trump and Republicans will have to be open to real negotiations in order to reach a budget deal, and added that the GOP would pay politically if there is a shutdown. 
  
 "Congressional negotiators are making good headway on a budget deal that would meet our commitments to our military and also urgent priorities here at home," Schumer said on the floor. 
  
 "Unfortunately, the progress here in Congress is in stark contrast to the rhetoric coming from the White House. President Trump again suggested yesterday that 'a shutdown could happen.' If a shutdown happens, as the president seemed to be rooting for in a tweet earlier this year, it will fall on his shoulders. His party controls the Senate, the House, and the presidency." 
  
 But first, Republicans had to put up the 217 votes to keep the government open Thursday — not an easy feat for a conference populated with conservatives who rarely vote for any spending bills. 
  
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 That's why Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other GOP leaders spent much of Wednesday huddling with conservative hard-liners unhappy with the leadership plan to avert a shutdown. McCarthy even brought in McConnell to talk to frustrated rank-and-file members grumbling about the strategy at one point. 
  
 By Thursday morning, however, House GOP leaders were predicting they'd have the votes to pass the continuing resolution. And they were right. 
  
 Rachael Bade, Jennifer Scholtes and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report. ||||| President Donald Trump accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, listens as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks before a meeting with congressional leaders including House Speaker Paul... (Associated Press) 
  
 President Donald Trump accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, listens as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks before a meeting with congressional leaders including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer... (Associated Press) 
  
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress on Thursday passed a stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown this weekend and buy time for challenging talks on a wide range of unfinished business on Capitol Hill. The shutdown reprieve came as all sides issued optimistic takes on an afternoon White House meeting between top congressional leaders and President Donald Trump. 
  
 The measure passed the House 235-193, mostly along party lines, and breezed through the Senate on a sweeping 81-14 tally barely an hour later. It would keep the government running through Dec. 22, when another, and more difficult, shutdown problem awaits. 
  
 The bill now heads to Trump for his signature. 
  
 Topics at the White House session included relief from a budget freeze on the Pentagon and domestic agencies, extending a key children's health program and aid to hurricane-slammed Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida. The trickiest topic, and a top priority for Democrats, involves protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. 
  
 These "Dreamer" immigrants are viewed sympathetically by the public and most lawmakers but face deportation in a few months because Trump reversed administrative protections provided to them by former President Barack Obama. 
  
 In back-to-back statements, both Democratic and GOP leaders declared the meeting "productive." The White House called it "constructive." 
  
 "We had a productive conversation on a wide variety of issues. Nothing specific has been agreed to, but discussions continue," said Capitol Hill's top Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, ticking off a roster of Democratic priorities, including domestic spending increases, funding for veterans and money to battle opioid abuse, immigration and health care. 
  
 GOP leaders said they agreed with the need to address immigration, including the almost 1 million immigrants given protections by Obama, many of whom have only known America as their home. 
  
 Spokesmen for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said GOP leaders "stressed the need to address border security, interior enforcement and other parts of our broken immigration system," adding that the tricky immigration issue "should be a separate process and not used to hold hostage funding for our men and women in uniform." 
  
 Negotiations are sure to be challenging. Pelosi staked out a hard line Thursday and insisted that any year-end deal solve the immigration issue. 
  
 Pelosi told reporters before the meeting that "we will not leave here" without helping the "Dreamers." Her stance was noteworthy because GOP leaders are likely to require Democratic votes for the pre-Christmas spending bill. 
  
 The White House said "negotiations on immigration should be held separately on a different track" and not slow down funding increases for the Pentagon. 
  
 Pelosi returned from the White House to oppose Thursday's stopgap bill. Fourteen Democrats supported the measure, however, while 18 Republicans opposed it. 
  
 Among Republicans, the conservative House Freedom Caucus had resisted the pending stopgap measure earlier in the week, fearing it would lead to a bad deal for conservatives down the road. But on Thursday, the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said the group will likely give leaders whatever support they need to pass the legislation. 
  
 Meadows said they'd help it pass to avoid distractions from the GOP drive to push their treasured $1.5 trillion tax bill through Congress this month. That measure, which mostly benefits businesses and upper-income people, is Trump's and the GOP's top remaining priority and would be their first major legislative triumph of the year. 
  
 But hours before Trump was to bargain with congressional leaders at the White House over longer-term spending decisions, Meadows said the conservatives would oppose any agreement they feel allows excessive federal spending. 
  
 "I want to avoid a headline that says President Trump's administration just passes the highest spending levels in U.S. history," Meadows told reporters. "There will be zero support on numbers that are too high, regardless of anybody's position on that." 
  
 He also said Ryan promised he'd fight in coming weeks to pass a full-year budget for the military and leave fights with Democrats over domestic spending for later. It is unclear how that strategy would work, since Republicans control the Senate 52-48 and will need at least eight Democratic votes to pass any spending legislation. 
  
 The prospects for successful White House talks were buffeted Wednesday when the impulsive Trump blurted to reporters that a shutdown "could happen." He blamed Democrats, saying they want "illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime." 
  
 Last week, an unexpected attack by Trump on Schumer and Pelosi prompted the two to skip a bargaining session. 
  
 The two-week spending bill also makes money available to several states that are running out of funds for the Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP. That widely popular program provides medical care to more than 8 million children. 
  
 The CHIP issue is among the year-end items where negotiations have gone positively, and aides say a long-term agreement is nearly in hand. |||||
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– The US government will stay open—for at least two more weeks—after the House and Senate passed a short-term funding bill Thursday, Politico reports. The bill, which funds the government through Dec. 22, passed the House 235-193 and Senate 81-14 just ahead of the Friday deadline. Republicans will still need Democratic votes to pass a long-term spending bill before 2018, and Democrats are taking the opportunity to make demands. According to the AP, Democratic leaders discussed extending a program for children's health, hurricane aid, and protection for Dreamers during a meeting with Republican leaders and President Trump on Thursday at the White House. The meeting was called "productive" and "constructive" by all sides.