Democrats are playing up the Republicans’ inability to finish legislative work on things like the Zika virus and a Puerto Rico rescue package, and are hoping to use those delays to paint the GOP as the party that can’t govern in the months before the 2016 elections.
For some of these issues, the delays aren’t long, and Republican leaders insist they’ll be able to complete the work in May or soon after. But it’s enough of a delay to give Democrats a new political argument.
Democrats have seen GOP vulnerabilities on Zika for the last several weeks. President Obama has led the charge here, by saying the GOP-led House and Senate have failed to pass a bill providing the $1.9 billion in funding to fight the spread of the virus, which has been linked to severe birth defects in children.
“Republicans haven’t lifted a finger that we’re aware of to stop Zika,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on the Senate floor Thursday.
A bill to provide new oversight and debt restructuring capabilities in cash-strapped Puerto Rico also failed to make it to the floor of either Chamber this week, despite the threat that the U.S. territory will likely default on a May 2 debt payment of $422 million.
And Republican lawmakers appear to have all but abandoned their goal of passing a budget plan, in light of the battle within the Republican Party over whether to reverse last year’s decision to allow higher spending levels.
Lawmakers missed an April 15 deadline to pass a budget and have instead embarked on the consideration of appropriations bills without laying out their spending framework for fiscal 2017 and beyond.
Democrats are seizing on these difficulties as the latest sign of GOP dysfunction. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called the House “a virtual wasteland of legislative inaction and inability to function properly.”
Republicans counter those complaints by defending their big-ticket accomplishments so far this year. That includes items that had stalled under Democratic majorities, such as a highway funding bill and an education overhaul.
They also say the stalled items won’t be stalled forever. Lawmakers who are taking the lead on writing the Puerto Rico legislation are working with Treasury officials and “are getting very close,” to completing legislation they hope will be ready in May, said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
The Zika funding bill is also in the works. House appropriators have been working with the Obama administration to find out more details about the money the White House requested in a Feb. 22 letter that they said is needed to combat the mosquito-transmitted disease.
The Senate was drafting a $1.1 billion emergency spending bill for Zika, but House GOP pushback put the deal on hold while administration officials work to provide the spending details House Republicans are seeking.
The federal government has for now redirected $590 million to the Zika effort from a fund left over from the effort to stop the spread of the Ebola virus.
“The problem has been we have been unable to get those justification numbers from the administration,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. “We are slowly getting there. But it’s been like pulling a bad tooth. As soon as as we can get hard information about what the actual needs are, right now, we can consider acting.”
The House is also working to advance series of bills that would help the nation combat the growing problem of opioid addiction. The Senate passed its own legislation weeks ago and has been eager for the House to act. The bills cleared committee this week and will likely be on the floor when the House returns the week of May 8.
Of all the unfinished business, the budget faces the smallest chance of ever making it to the House floor, and Democrats are likely to hammer away on that point for the rest of the year.
With conservatives balking at the $1.07 trillion top line spending limit for fiscal 2017, House Republicans now seem likely to forgo their effort to pass the blueprint and just work to advance individual spending bills.
House Republicans didn’t even discuss a budget plan at their weekly conference meeting. The Senate has also shrugged off the budget and has begun consideration of appropriations bills.
Ryan said House talks are continuing, but acknowledged that a bipartisan agreement in 2015 that set the $1.07 trillion cap for fiscal 2017 “has taken the pressure off some people believing that we need to do a budget.”
