White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. — With a shutdown deadline looming on Feb. 8 and no long-term deal at hand, congressional GOP leaders said on Thursday they will have to pass yet another short-term spending bill next week to keep the government open.

House GOP leaders are eyeing a spending bill through March 22, aides said, though that date could change. It would have to pass early next week, ahead of the shutdown deadline at midnight on Thursday.

That’s when government funding would run out if Congress doesn’t act, which would trigger another shutdown like the one last month.

As Republicans gathered at the Greenbrier retreat in West Virginia for their annual retreat, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., insisted that the government would stay open.

The three-day partial shutdown in late January was precipitated by Senate Democrats’ demands for protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

“I don’t think we’ll see a threatened government shutdown again over this subject,” McConnell said. “One of my favorite old Kentucky country sayings is ‘there’s no education in the second kick of a mule,’ so I think there’ll be a new level of seriousness here in trying to resolve these issues.”

Even so, it seemed unlikely that House and Senate negotiators would be able to strike the bipartisan, two-year budget deal they’re striving for ahead of Feb. 8. Even if they do, lawmakers would need weeks to turn agreed-upon figures into complete spending bills for all the agencies of government.

Next week’s stopgap legislation would be the fifth short-term “continuing resolution” of this fiscal year, a situation that’s causing frustration and finger-pointing on all sides. That includes within GOP ranks, which could jeopardize passage of the CR as conservative lawmakers and defense hawks both threatened on Thursday to withhold their votes.

Rep. Mark Meadow, R-N.C., who chairs the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House, said his group might not support another short-term spending bill without promises of action on higher military spending levels and other issues.

“I don’t see the probability of the Freedom Caucus supporting a fifth CR without substantial changes by Feb. 8 unless we see dramatic changes,” Meadows told reporters. “We’ve had the land of promise for four times now on CRs. It’s time to put some real commitment to the effort before a fifth CR.”

Defense hawks in the House have grown increasingly frustrated with the multiple short-term spending bills, contending they threaten military readiness and even cost lives since the Pentagon is not getting the money it needs.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, told reporters after a closed-door session with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that both Cabinet members were insisting on an end to short-term spending bills.

“The secretaries were very clear, I think, in encouraging Congress to resolve the budget issues and end the continuing resolutions so that they can manage their departments,” Thornberry said, “and more importantly, so the world knows that we are functioning and can do whatever needs to be done to protect the national security of the United States.”

Thornberry refused to commit to voting for the continuing resolution expected on the floor next week.

“We’re just going to have to see what the situation is when it arrives. Obviously there’s a lot of conversation among members at this retreat about the way forward,” he said. “Nobody wants a government shutdown, but we also cannot continue to inflict the damage that CRs inflict on the military. We can’t keep doing that.”

Overall discretionary spending levels are capped under a 2011 law, and exceeding those spending caps requires bipartisan agreement under Senate filibuster rules. Republicans are trying to negotiate an enormous increase in military spending in the pending budget deal, which Democrats hope to match with domestic spending.

Previous budget deals passed under President Barack Obama in 2013 and 2015 proceeded along those lines. But now, with Republicans in the White House and in control of both houses of Congress, GOP lawmakers want to pursue a tougher posture.

Meadows and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 3 Senate Republican, suggested they might be willing to live with an increase in nondefense spending as long as the extra funding is devoted to infrastructure, a major congressional agenda item for the Trump administration. There is no indication that Democrats, who are pushing for new investments to combat the opioid crisis and beef up veterans’ benefits, would agree to those terms.