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Article snippet: Congress struggled Tuesday to finalize a 2018 spending package, leaving negotiators scrambling for an eleventh-hour breakthrough and top leaders weighing the need for a short-term spending patch to prevent yet another government shutdown on Saturday. House GOP leaders had hoped to pass a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill on Wednesday, which would have given the Senate several days to move the package through the upper chamber, where a single lawmaker can delay the consideration of bills. But entrenched partisan differences over a number of policy riders — accompanied by a freak March storm that threatened to dump heavy snow on Washington and shutter Congress on Wednesday — thwarted those plans. With time running out until a shutdown, leaders of both parties on Tuesday floated passing what would be the sixth stopgap measure of the fiscal year. “That would be the one thing we could do,” said Sen. MORE (Texas), the second-ranking Republican in the upper chamber, referring to the possibility of another continuing resolution (CR). As of press time Tuesday evening, no agreement on the spending package had yet emerged. And while the top leaders of each party were optimistic a deal could be struck before the day’s end, the mood among rank-and-file members was grim. “It’s just a mess,” one GOP lawmaker told The Hill after Tuesday’s last series of votes. Rep. MORE (R-Pa.), who chairs an Appropriations subcommittee, said he’s “uneasy” about the evolving legislati... Link to the full article to read more