Good Wednesday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing,

sponsored by Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses. And I'm Anna Palmer. We're kicking off today with an

interesting spotted. House Majority Whips Steve Scalise and his chief of staff, Brett Horton,

were spotted having dinner with Stephen Miller last night at Capitol Grill. And we've got some news at the top of playbook.

Megan McCain told me in a woman rule podcast that the president called her after reports

surfaced this fall that he was mocking her father, Arizona Senator John McCain.

And she doesn't believe he'll be trashing him again anytime soon.

Let's get to the big story of the day, week, and potentially month, the government shuts down tomorrow.

Should you be worried? Possibly a little. There's been a tad bit of progress since yesterday.

The House has cleared its government funding bill, which keeps coffers filled until March 23rd,

while funding two years of community health centers and a year-long

military spending boost. This is going nowhere, but it's important. At least it gets a bill over

to the Senate for them to start action. Now we're entering into the really complicated phase.

This is going to be a hectic 48 hours. Now it's the Senate's turn to act, and this could become

an unthinkably massive package.

The Senate is likely to attach the following items to the Stop Gap spending bill that keeps government open until March 23rd, a deal to increase the debt limit, a bipartisan agreement

to boost spending levels, disaster relief, and an extension of various tax provisions.

Looking for a parallel, this is almost like the John Boehner clean the barn gambit before

he retired and handed the reins to Paul Ryan. Let's unpack the Republicans gamble. This is a

bipartisan deal in the Senate, so you don't have to worry about things on that side of the dome. They've all

but said shutting down the government is not an option. But where does Nancy Pelosi land? Our guess is House

Republicans could be counted on for about 120 to 150 votes for a package that big and that

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