TPM's Esme Cribb reported this news yesterday:
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Saturday urged Republican members of Congress to focus on keeping the government from shutting down, and offered few specifics about a new health care bill, according to a report by the Washington Post.
This is important because up until a few days ago Trump had been insisting that Obamacare repeal, tax cuts for the rich, and his godforsaken wall all be a part of the funding bill. Yet as Cribb states later in her article, Trump has walked all of that back in the last two days.
Because of the way reconciliation and bills involving money work, any tax cuts the Republicans propose have to be paid for in some way. Ryan was counting on being able to kill off Obamacare and use its trillions in revenue, along with deep cuts to other programs, to pay for these tax cuts for the rich. That's why ACA repeal has to happen before tax cuts for the rich can happen.
Yet ACA repeal is not popular even among Republicans, and all indications are that this won't change as 2018 approaches. Quite simply, the Republicans don't dare do this. And they certainly don't want to shut down the government over this.
Don't be surprised if, instead of the deep program cuts that Republicans from Trump to Mulvaney to Ryan have been proclaiming, we essentially see a budget with no real changes in it, aside perhaps from a few pro-forma swipes at the EPA.