Negotiations for an omnibus spending bill to fund the government for the next year appear to be crawling along as calls grow for a short-term stopgap measure.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the negotiations between House and Senate appropriators from both parties are hung up over domestic spending. Republicans are starting to push for a continuing resolution that would fund the government at current levels until January, when the GOP will take the majority in the House and give the party greater control over the budget.
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“Our strong preference is to have a bipartisan omnibus bill,” Pelosi said at her Thursday press conference. “We still see a pathway to achieving that; however, if we don’t have it, we may be forced to have a yearlong CR.”
“I don’t like that, but it’s much better than the poison that might befall us with another kind of bill,” she added. “This is a last resort and would leave many critical government services, including the Defense Department, in need of funding in the year ahead.”
The two sides are reportedly disagreeing over $25 billion worth of nondefense spending, while the bill totals over $1 trillion. Not much seems to have moved since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Tuesday that negotiations were “at a pretty significant impasse.”
The appropriators have just over a week to pass some kind of spending bill before government funding runs out on Dec. 16, though they may elect to enact a very short-term CR until Dec. 23 to extend the negotiating period.
Conservatives in the House, especially the Freedom Caucus, have been demanding for months that Republicans only agree to a short-term CR that will fund the government through January, when they can pick up the negotiations in a better position rather than let a lame-duck legislature decide spending for an entire year.
Senate Republicans are now taking up the call for a short-term CR as well. Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Mike Lee (R-UT) sent a letter to McConnell urging him not to entertain a Democratic-backed omnibus, writing that “for the Senate to ram through a so-called ‘omnibus’ bill — which would fund the entirety of the Pelosi-Schumer spending agenda through most of next year — would utterly disempower the new Republican House from enacting our shared priorities.”
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McConnell said Tuesday that the likelihood of pursuing a CR lasting a handful of weeks is becoming increasingly likely. “We’re running out of time, and that may end up being the only option left that we could agree to pursue,” he told reporters.
After a meeting at the White House last month, congressional leaders emerged with a general consensus that a yearlong omnibus should be pursued, jump-starting negotiations in earnest.
The two sides have not yet agreed on a top-line number, though, as lawmakers barrel toward the mid-December deadline.
“As the calendar is compressed, it brings more of a sense of urgency,” Republican Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters on Thursday.
Senate Democrats plan to introduce their own omnibus on Monday in a bid to pressure recalcitrant Republicans.
“This is a reasonable path forward, and I suggest my Republican friends take it,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said this week.
