This afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delayed a procedural vote on the stopgap spending bill until 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. McConnell, R-Ky., also said he anticipates the Senate will be in session next week. The postponed procedural vote is on the expected legislative vehicle for the CR (HR 5325).
Category: Legislation
Senate Moves Vote Back
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the the procedural vote (cloture vote) to proceed with the continuing resolution has been moved. The vote is now scheduled to take place at 2:15 pm on Tuesday.
Stay tuned.
Long Weekend Negotiating for Unclear Week Ahead
Negotiations to craft a 10-week continuing resolution (CR) continued throughout the weekend as Congressional Leadership worked to nail down an agreement ahead of a Monday night procedural vote in the Senate. At 5:30 pm tonight, the Senate is scheduled to take a procedural vote, a cloture vote, intended to move forward with the package. It should be noted that Senate Leadership announced and planned on having a vote on this package last week, before it became clear a final bill was not yet reached.
While Republicans and Democrats are getting close to an agreement, sticking points remain with the package. Those issues include:
- language within a Zika virus response package related to Planned Parenthood services in Puerto Rico,
- offsets for the new $1.1 billion for anti-Zika spending, and what those offsets would be, if at all, from the $750 million in offsets from the Zika conference report;
- provisions within the Zika legislation related to pesticide spraying should be exempt from the Clean Water Act;
- including emergency flood relief for Louisiana and how much, which has been complicated by a Democratic push to pair flood money with aid for Flint, MI; and
- and unrelated policy riders dealing with the Export-Import Bank, a federal transfer of certain internet oversight functions and more.
As a reminder, Congress has until September 30 to pass the continuing resolution and avert a partial government shutdown when FY 2016 funding expires. The FY 2017 measure is expected to adhere to FY 2016 spending levels and run through December 9, one week before Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the December holidays.
The Senate is expected to use the FY 2017 Legislative Branch appropriations bill (HR 5325), which previously passed the House, as a vehicle for the CR. The spending package is also expected to include full-year FY 2017 appropriations for veterans programs and military construction projects.
If the measure passes on Monday, expect the Senate to recess until after the election Thursday or Friday. If the Senate passes and leaves, that forces the House into a take it or leave it position with the CR that the Senate passes, meaning pass the Senate bill or shut down the federal government just before an election. And shutting down the government was not very popular last time it happened.
Keep in mind, this fight will continue next year and play into a larger spending argument, as the nation’s debt limit will be reached in March of next year. The battle could begin as early as March, when the current suspension of any debt limit — negotiated as part of a bipartisan budget deal last year — is set to expire. But Congress could punt the decision for several more months, because of the Treasury’s ability to use financial mechanisms to continue borrowing past the March 15 deadline into the fall.
Senate Pushes CR Off Until Monday
After a week of declarations and revisions, the Senate has postponed their consideration of a CR until Monday. Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle conceded they are not prepared to wrap up negotiations this week.
Congressional leaders and appropriators have been working on the funding bill since coming back into session earlier this month. The key sticking points appear to be language in the Zika conference report that would restrict which clinics in Puerto Rico can receive additional funding and an exemption for certain types of mosquito spraying under the Clean Water Act. Those objections caused Democrats to block the $1.1 billion Zika funding bill in the Senate in June.
In addition to Zika funding, numerous lawmakers have requested that emergency spending, including money for Flint’s lead-contaminated drinking water problem and Louisiana’s recent flooding. The White House sent a $2.6 billion emergency funding request to Congress on Tuesday and Louisiana Members are pushing for at least some of that money to be added to the CR.
While the Senate has, so far and continues to, lead the discussions around a CR and many expect McConnell to move legislation through his chamber first, beginning with procedural vote Monday night. House Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers (R-KY) said he reserved the right for the House to move a bill to the floor before the Senate, but with the House leaving early Thursday afternoon, such a move seems unlikely.
Hiccup with a CR
Writing a stopgap spending measure, known as a Continuing Resolution (CR), to avoid a government shutdown on October 1st, just got a bit harder than lawmakers anticipated.
Typically, CRs extend current funding levels into the new fiscal year for a short duration. Unfortunately, there’s a hitch this time. If current FY2016 funding is simply extended, it would exceed the FY 2017 discretionary spending caps as set by Sequestration in 2011. How much will it exceed? According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a straight extension will exceed the caps by $10 billion.As scored by CBO for the purposes of a stopgap, FY 2016 base discretionary spending comes in at $1.080 trillion, $10 billion above the $1.070 trillion, FY 2017 limit.
The CBO explained that most of the excess spending comes from the scheduled expiration of some spending cuts in fiscal 2017, as previously passed in prior fiscal years.
So some of the same budget maneuvers that allowed Congress to spend billions more dollars in FY 2016 are now complicating the crafting of a stopgap funding measure to keep the government operating when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. The maneuvers that were used in FY 2016 include changes in mandatory programs, or so-called CHIMPs, that inflated nondefense spending in FY 2016. CHIMPs refer to provisions in appropriations bills that reduce or constrain mandatory spending, providing an offset for higher discretionary spending.
In preparing for a stopgap spending measure, the CBO’s score must eliminate any savings that do not automatically continue into the next year, including changes in mandatory programs that appropriators often make to free up extra money for discretionary projects. Changes in mandatory programs, mostly from an expiring cut to the Children’s Health Insurance Fund, account for $5.6 billion of the lost savings. Further, the CBO score assumes that a CR extends the entirety of the subsequent fiscal year, not a short duration — a prudent move since it is currently unclear how long the CR will last. The date being cited most often now is December 9th.
It is not yet clear whether the overage problem can be fixed through some simple technical corrections, or whether it could mean trimming any popular programs.
Meanwhile, the House Republican Caucus remains deeply divided on how to proceed. Despite the Constitution clearly stating that the power of the purse originates in the House, the Senate will go first in trying to pass a short-term CR next week to keep the federal government functioning through the November election.
Stay tuned.