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.
News and updates
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.
What We’re Reading This Week, September 12-16
Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.
We Just Don’t Like You – After a tough week for both candidates, Trump isn’t doing well, but neither is Clinton. While national polls still show Clinton with a lead, it’s becoming more obvious that Clinton is the least-popular major party nominee of all time — except for Donald Trump. Read more in Vox.
Path Forward – With the new round of polling, it looks like Trump has a path forward to the magical 270 electoral votes. Read more in Politico.
Minibus or Bigbus? – In January, House and Senate vowed to move all 12 individual spending bills, something that hadn’t been accomplished in more than a decade. That leaves Republicans with the challenge of funding the government for the next fiscal year, which has in the past been done through passage of an omnibus that piles all 12 appropriations bills together…or in a series of piles considered “minibuses”. Neither of which has much political will to happen. Read more in The Hill.
I’m Not That Guy – Last year, Speaker Ryan reluctantly shoved through an omnibus package after Boehner’s resignation and his own surprise ascension to the Speakership. The omnibus was a last testament to Boehner’s troubled leadership. House conservatives pressured him to resign after they grew sick of him ramming through last-minute, backroom spending deals with Democrats. This year, Ryan’s probably going to have to do the same thing again. Read more in The Hill.
Take Note – A coalition of 40 civil rights, legal-aid and public-interest groups is urging the Education Department to track and monitor the effect of student loans on people of color, who are shouldering the burden of education debt. Read more in The Washington Post.
Um, the Books? – SUNY Stoney Brook has a partnership with Amazon, now the university’s official book retailer. Students can purchase texts through a Stony Brook-specific Amazon page and have them delivered to campus. In the campus store, where the textbooks used to be, there are now adult coloring books, racks of university-branded polos and windbreakers and three narrow bookshelves displaying assorted novels. The rest of the store is a vibrant collage of spirit wear and school supplies: backpacks and baseball caps; pompom hats and striped scarves; notebooks and correction fluid. Read more in the New York Times.
Well Endowed – One of the most polarizing issues in higher education took center stage on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as House members questioned whether universities could do more with their tax-exempt endowments to help families struggling with the high costs of college. Read more in The Washington Post.
Best Towns – It’s that time of year again when college students are streaming back to school. Across the nation, some 17 million Americans are headed to college this fall. But, where, exactly, are they heading to? To get at this, we charted America’s biggest and best college towns based on 2014 enrollment data for some 750 metro and micropolitan locations across the U.S. Read more in The Atlantic’s CityLab.
Best of the Best – USNews is out with it’s annual “Best of” Rankings on Colleges. Princeton came out on top. However, thanks to the Internet, there’s a plethora of rankings for just about every aspect of college life including best bars, best green colleges, best radio stations, best dorms. Read more at The Washington Post.
Buying Bacon – You’ve probably seen and handled supermarket bacon countless times. The standard one-pound package shows the bacon slices fanned out, with only their leading edges exposed. Those front edges tend to feature more lean muscle than the fattier back edges creating the illusion that the bacon is leaner than it is. Thus selling more bacon. Read more in Bloomberg.
The Rise of Chickens – Think chicken is every where? You can thank the Catholic Church. Read more in Science.
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.
NCAA Championships Moved Away From North Carolina
The NCAA has announced it will no longer hold championship tournament games in North Carolina, citing a law passed by the state last year that eliminates discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community. The law, House Bill 2, gained national attention for mandating that individuals use the bathroom associated with the gender listed on their birth certificate.
In a statement from the NCAA Board of Governors, which is largely made up of university presidents and chancellors, the NCAA said, “NCAA championships and events must promote an inclusive atmosphere for all college athletes, coaches, administrators and fans. Current North Carolina state laws make it challenging to guarantee that host communities can help deliver on that commitment.” The NCAA is the latest of many organization, including the NBA, to voice disapproval of the measure.