House GOP resolves to 'shut down the border or shut down the government' in 16 days

House GOP lawmakers offered affirmation Wednesday that a partial government shutdown could be in the offing in just 16 days largely over the immigration issue.

In a series of comments, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues reiterated that their focus in the coming negotiations will be on making the border into an obligatory part of the government funding talks — when those talks resume in earnest.

But the group offered little clarity on what could be the path to compromise to avert a government shutdown and the economic costs such a stoppage could entail.

"What we saw today only made House Republicans more resolved," said Johnson in remarks to reporters near the US-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas.

"We want to get the border closed and secure first," he said of the House GOP priorities, with America’s fiscal stewardship named as his second priority.

House Republicans are highlighting record flows across the border, including a December that has reportedly seen a record 300,000 encounters between migrants and the US Border Patrol.

The comments Wednesday came alongside another reminder of Congress's predicament with the news that US government debt has now topped $34 trillion for the first time. Data from the Treasury Department showed the national debt hit the milestone on Dec. 29.

The wide-ranging talks are set to be further complicated by an ongoing debate over foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. House Republicans have been deeply skeptical of additional funding for Ukraine and promised to consider it only if their preferred immigration measures are signed into law.

Meanwhile, some economic observers have begun to warn that a shutdown is now more likely than not, with Stifel chief Washington policy strategist Brian Gardner recently telling clients "our base case is a partial government shutdown beginning in late January."

BTIG director of policy research Isaac Boltansky said in a recent Yahoo Finance Live interview "government shutdown risks are real" but argues another round of fighting ultimately "should not matter to investors" unless it morphs into a protracted stoppage.

A hard line

Johnson's border comments Wednesday were echoed throughout the day by a range of other GOP lawmakers who drew a hard line on the issue.

"None of us want to shut down the government but all of us recognize that every penny we are giving to the Homeland Security Department at this point ... is hurting our national security," said Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas).

"We shouldn’t be funding the Biden administration’s prerogatives until they start taking care of making our border secure," added Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) in a video posted online from the border area.

"Shut down the border or shut down the government," added Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in his own missive Wednesday from Washington.

He added that House Republicans could force a shutdown over the issue, arguing "when we unite, we have all the power in the world."

Even if they can find compromise on the immigration issue, negotiators also have made little progress on the larger debt debate, with an agreement on top-line appropriations numbers still elusive and little sense that individual appropriations bills to fund the government could pass in time.

Wednesday’s comments from the border also drew immediate rebukes from the White House, with spokesperson Andrew Bates saying in a statement that "House Republicans are once more compromising America’s national security and economic growth with shutdown threats."

"America doesn’t need a shutdown right now," added Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live.

He also pointed to some economic costs for the airline industry that a shutdown could entail, arguing a stoppage would "stop us in our tracks on one of the most important things we're doing right now, which is growing the workforce of air traffic controllers."

Secretary Buttigieg’s department could be one of the first to face a shutdown on Jan. 19, with air traffic controllers potentially forced to work without paychecks.

The coming weeks

Currently, one chunk of the government — from the Food and Drug Administration to the Energy and Transportation Departments — is funded only until Jan. 19, 2024, and would shut down on that date without action from Congress.

Authorization for the remainder of Washington's discretionary spending is set to expire just two weeks later on Feb. 2.

But even with the parties far apart on the appropriations bills, immigration appears to be set to overhang the coming talks.

House Republicans are largely taking an all-or-nothing approach on that issue and saying their preferred bill — dubbed H.R. 2 — is the only way to avert a shutdown. That bill passed the House last May with all Democrats and two Republicans opposed.

Meanwhile Senate immigration negotiators — including Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) — have been working for weeks to try and find compromise on issues like reforming the asylum system but have little to show so far in terms of progress toward a deal.

"We are making progress on this," Lankford said in December.

But even if a deal is eventually announced, many House Republicans have pledged to reject anything the Senate does.

Johnson underlined the position Wednesday, saying "the House has done its job."

Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

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