Senate lawmakers have just started considering fiscal 2022 spending bills, but Republicans are warning the overall package needs to boost defense money and exclude abortion rights and other “poison pill” language to win their support.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Democrats from the Senate floor Wednesday that any spending agreement must include adequate military funding and exclude policy riders GOP lawmakers traditionally oppose.
“When it comes to floor consideration, we cannot and will not start planting individual trees before we have bipartisan consensus on the shape of the forest,” said the Kentucky Republican.
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McConnell’s threat could upend the chance of passing spending legislation ahead of the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year and increases the likelihood that Congress will have to pass a stopgap bill to keep the government operating.
Just a few hours after McConnell’s warning, the Senate Appropriations Committee began its fiscal 2022 spending consideration by advancing the Energy and Water and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill with a strong bipartisan vote.
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, touted the cooperation so far between the two parties and gave a nod to GOP participation in determining how much to spend on both military and domestic accounts.
In recent years, the two parties have agreed to split spending evenly between the two.
“Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee proved that it can work together in a bipartisan way to do the work of the American people,” Leahy said. “Now, it is more important than ever to complete bipartisan, bicameral negotiations with the White House on top-line spending between defense and nondefense programs so that the committee can finish its work.”
But the two parties are likely to clash over policy riders, as well as border security funding.
Republicans are opposed to stripping out decades-old spending bill language that prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for abortions.
The language is known as the Hyde Amendment, named after a late Republican House member from Illinois. House Democrats stripped it from their version of the Labor and Health and Human Services spending bill last month.
Liberal Democrats celebrated the move.
Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat, said the Hyde Amendment discriminated against women.
“Abortion care is healthcare, and healthcare is a human right,” Bush said.
House Democrats now hope the Senate will endorse their Hyde-free spending bill. But unlike the House, where a simple majority is needed to pass legislation, the Democratic majority in the Senate will need at least 10 Republicans to advance and pass legislation.
McConnell warned Wednesday the only way to get bipartisan cooperation is to leave out the pro-abortion language.
“We need to keep foundational mainstays like the Hyde Amendment right where they are, and neither side should throw new wrenches into the process,” McConnell said.
Republicans want to increase spending on securing the border, where 6,000 illegal immigrants have been apprehended each month.
Democrats are opposed to resuming the border wall construction halted by President Joe Biden when he took office; instead, they want to spend more on assimilating illegal immigrants seeking asylum in the United States.
McConnell said Democrats, who control the majority, are not focused on striking a spending deal ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline and are instead working to unilaterally pass a $3.5 trillion spending package for new social programs such as free childcare, free community college, and an expansion of Medicare.
“Our colleagues’ fixation on far-left shiny objects is distracting them from basic governance,” McConnell said. “They are more focused on ramming through another reckless, inflationary taxing and spending spree than ensuring we avoid a stalemate over government funding.”
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Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who is the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said talks between the two parties are in progress.
“I’m advocating for more money for defense,” Shelby said. “For parity. Anything I can get.”
