House GOP leaders have set their sights on passing a stopgap funding measure that would keep the federal government funded through Nov. 20 as a shutdown deadline looms at the end of September.

Lawmakers have limited time to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to provide short-term funding until November and may well face a showdown with House Democrats who are demanding that any stopgap measure contain major healthcare concessions before they’ll vote for it.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters last week that the CR will largely be “pretty clean” but the text of the plan, detailing how long the resolution might extend funding has yet to be released.

GOP leaders have suggested shorter-term measure to extend federal funding for a month or two beyond the Sept. 30 deadline but the White House has encouraged those leaders to provide a slightly longer time frame, possibly through January 31 of next year.

The idea has also been floated of passing a series of multiple short-term CRs as a way to address funding.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) told NOTUS that the White House has expressed a willingness to be flexible and would like to avoid a government shutdown, but noted, “There’s a big debate among appropriators that doing that would delay the process, because this place works, deadlines are like alarm clocks around here.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are using the approaching funding deadline as leverage to get the healthcare concessions they’re seeking.

Last week, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) stopped short of threatening a shutdown but also made it clear that Democrats would Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies a main issue.

Aguilar said, “We see this being a fight over values. We see this being a fight over the Republican assault on health care.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the House GOP would like to extend spending until Nov. 20, and then negotiate on three Senate-passed bills.

Johnson added, “We may need a short gap funding measure … to allow the negotiations to continue.”