EXCLUSIVE — Fiscal hawks are laying out to Senate leadership what it would take for them to drop their objections to a spending bill appropriators hope to begin moving in the coming days.
Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rick Scott (R-FL) met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Wednesday toward the tail end of Republicans’ conference lunch about the minibus, a package of appropriations bills that would fund the Pentagon and other federal agencies.
Their chief demand, made in public and private, is that Republicans adhere to a self-imposed ban on earmarks that some senators, many of them appropriators, have ignored in recent years. But Lee, in particular, is upset about a “bunch of authorizing bill text” that he says was “smuggled” into the Interior Department spending measure, he told the Washington Examiner, arguing there was not appropriate consultation given that he chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Interior Department.
Separately, the fiscal hawks are seeking a path forward on Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) Shutdown Fairness Act, which would require pay for essential workers during a lapse in government funding, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Johnson huddled with Scott and Lee in a Senate hideaway after their meeting with Thune and will be joining them later on Wednesday for another meeting with the majority leader, according to the source.
In a brief interview, Scott also said he wanted the Senate to preserve House language that blocks federal funding for abortion procedures and transgender surgeries in the Department of Health and Human Services bill.
The meetings come as Thune attempts to winnow down a series of “holds,” or procedural objections, that are keeping the Senate from passing a minibus of as many as five annual spending bills.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) initially objected to the minibus, he told the Washington Examiner, but dropped his hold in exchange for language on artificial intelligence he said would be included.
The legislation, co-sponsored with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), would require the Labor Department to monitor and publish the number of jobs lost to AI.
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In recent days, Thune has made the case that fiscal conservatives are better off dropping their objections, suggesting a minibus would include lower spending than the alternative: a short-term spending patch that keeps levels flat.
But those assurances have not been enough to break the logjam, with about five Senate Republicans keeping their holds in place. Lee called Thune’s assurance on lower spending levels “helpful, but not necessarily dispositive.”
