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Category: Appropriations

Senate Passes Budget Around 3 am

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The Senate cleared a bipartisan budget and debt limit accord early Friday morning which would send the legislation to the President’s desk. Roughly 72 hours after it was unveiled and buying roughly two years of relative budgetary stability after months of partisan sniping on spending, the Senate passed HR1314 shortly after 3 am. The House passed the measure Wednesday evening.

Just after  3 am, the upper chamber passed the deal by a vote of 64-35, roughly 90 minutes after voting to cut off debate on the legislation. Eighteen Republicans voted in favor of final passage, including Senate GOP Leadership, while 35 Republicans voted against the measure.  Forty-four Democrats and two independent senators who conference with Democrats backed the package. See the vote total here.

The budget deal would raise discretionary spending caps for defense and nondefense accounts by $80 billion above the sequester level for fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2017 and suspend the debt limit until March 15, 2017. The increased discretionary spending is offset with cuts to various entitlement programs and revenue raisers.

The President announced his support earlier this week.

House Goes First on Budget Deal

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At midnight last night, the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015 was introduced in the House, and the House Rules Committee is expected to consider the measure tomorrow paving the way for the full House to consider the legislation Wednesday. Passage is expected Wednesday and the measure will move to the Senate Wednesday night. The Senate is expected to consider and pass the measure by the end of the week.

The timing will give Boeher plenty of time to pass something before he retires and the elections for Paul Ryan as Speaker are held Thursday as well as before the national debt limit expires on November 3rd.

After the measure passes, the House and Senate Appropriations committees will begin working with the new top line budget amounts, known as 302(b)s, and those committees will begin on crafting new FY16 appropriations bills to pass before the December 11th Continuing Resolution expires.

 

Congress Is Back!

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After a one week recess to enjoy Columbus Day, Congress is back in session — the Senate will convene Monday and the House will be back Tuesday. The Senate is back and will be focused on considering S2146, the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act. It’s a bit looser on the House-side, which will be considering a series of noncontroversial measures and HR 1937, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act. Meanwhile, the most exciting thing happening in the House, and in DC as a whole, is whether Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) will or won’t run for Speaker to replace John Boehner (R-OH) and former-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies on Benghazi Thursday.

It truly is decision time for Paul Ryan, not just because Boehner has announced that he plans to leave Congress in 10 days…Ryan needs to make up his mind as to whether he will seek the Speakership or get out of the way and let the Republican party find another candidate.  If Ryan does not run, it is doubtful that the Speaker election will be wrapped up by Oct. 30, when Boehner planned to leave Congress. Boehner, who has pledged to remain in place until a new Speaker is chosen, could be forced to stay put and deal with thorny budget issues and raising the debt ceiling as a lame-duck Speaker…Not willing to leave his party in the lurch, Boehner has said he is willing to stay for some of November but does not expect to be in Congress come Thanksgiving.

Regardless of what Ryan decides, Boehner will stay until Republicans pick a new leader and he wants to set a date for the internal party election this week. The House GOP conference will spend several hours over the next three days behind closed doors, trying to settle on a strategy to avoid a default on the national debt, which is set to expire in early November, and chart a path for their party.

And this Speaker race is having serious implications on the debt and budget negotiations. Republicans are demanding changes to entitlement programs, a request that’s already been rejected by Democrats. Democrats want boosts in domestic spending without painful cuts, a nonstarter for the GOP. Meanwhile, there’s no House speaker scheduled to serve past October, which puts Senate Leadership, namely Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in a tough negotiating place with congressional Democrats and the White House on what exactly can get done and be passed all with little agreement in sight.

On Thursday, former Secretary of State Clinton squares off with the House Select Committee on Benghazi in what will arguably the highest-profile hearing of the year. It should be combative and explosive.

 

New Debt Limit Deadline: November 5th

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Congress will need to address the debt limit by November 5th or risk a default on the nation’s debt. The deadline is the first the Obama administration has set for raising the $18.1 trillion debt limit, and comes in somewhat earlier than what most experts had predicted. The federal government reached its borrowing limit in March and has since been deploying “extraordinary measures” to free up room beneath that limit.

That new deadline has major implications for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), likely the next Speaker of the House (elections will take place October 8th to replace current Speaker John Boehner, who is retiring at the end of October). Congress will need to figure out how to increase the nation’s borrowing limit, prevent a government shutdown, and keep money flowing to highway projects – all in a 30 to 60 day period. And all three will fall on a House Republican Conference in flux, with a new speaker, majority leader, and majority whip expected to be elected next week but not take over until November.

The administration has repeatedly said it will not negotiate raising the debt limit, but congressional Republicans in the past have pressed for spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Prior to the deadline, there had been talk of tying the debt limit to budget talks. But the month-long gap between the debt-limit deadline (November 5th) and expiration of government funding (December 11th) complicates matters.