Boehner proposes long-term spending bill to avoid shutdown fight: aide

 U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner urged fellow Republicans on Tuesday to pass a spending bill that funds most of the federal government through Sept. 30, 2015, avoiding a shutdown fight over President Barack Obama's immigration action.

At a closed meeting of House Republicans to plot strategy on how to handle a must-pass government spending bill, Boehner proposed including a short-term extension for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that will implement Obama's immigration order, a House Republican aide said.

That would allow Republicans to revisit efforts to block Obama's immigration action early next year. Congress must pass a federal government spending bill by Dec. 11 to avoid a shutdown. Some Republicans want to use the spending bill to defund Obama's unilateral action easing the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented residents.

The political stakes are high for Republicans. After huge wins in Nov. 4 elections that will give them a majority in the Senate and a bigger majority in the House next year, Boehner and other Republican leaders want to demonstrate that they can govern and avoid a shutdown fight.

Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois said Boehner's plan was well received, and he did not think the conservative effort to delete funding for immigration in the must-pass bill would get much traction.

"No one spoke in favor of a shutdown," Representative Peter King of New York told reporters.

But U.S. Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson told a congressional hearing he would not be able to fund the department's activities adequately with only a short-term funding bill.

"I cannot hire new Secret Service agents until I get an appropriations bill passed by this Congress, not another CR (short-term extension) for a couple of months," he told the Homeland Security Committee. "I cannot continue to fund our enhanced detention facility in Texas."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he has made it clear since the election that there would be no government shutdown.

“We need to quit, you know, kind of rattling the economy with things that are perceived by the voters as disturbing," he told a Washington conference.