Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is closing in on a deal to move the next set of spending bills, with the breakthrough leaving open the possibility the Senate could hold a floor vote before the Christmas recess.
Leadership has run a hotline, a message to all Senate offices, to see if there are objections to bundling five spending bills together as part of the minibus, with 10 separate amendments that will get a floor vote.
Thune is also granting votes on each of the five spending measures individually, a creative maneuver that allows senators to register their support or opposition to one or more bills without torpedoing the entire package.
The workaround is designed to appease Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who wants to vote for the military funding but has reservations over the earmarks in the other four bills. He and two other fiscal hawks have been holding up the minibus for weeks, with the amendment votes also geared toward addressing their concerns.
Notably, leadership has offered a vote to strip earmarks out of the spending legislation entirely, but that amendment is expected to fail on the Senate floor. A second amendment, written by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), would remove just the earmarks that he considers “egregious.”
Lee also secured a vote to remove certain authorizing language from the Interior Department spending bill, but it’s not clear whether his amendment has the votes to pass. As first reported by the Washington Examiner, Lee has been fuming that the language was inserted without consulting the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which he chairs.
“I agreed to accept some of it, but I’m demanding that some of the provisions be stricken,” Lee said on Thursday. “We’re still negotiating exactly what form that takes. Some of it’s a little bit tricky, but we’re very close.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the third fiscal hawk, has been offered a vote on his Shutdown Fairness Act, which guarantees that federal workers are paid when government funding lapses. A fourth senator who objected to the minibus, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), secured a vote to deny lawmaker pay when the government shuts down, according to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK); however, this was not listed in Thursday’s hotline.
The movement raises hopes that appropriators can make meaningful progress on government funding with weeks to go before a Jan. 30 deadline. Congress passed three of the 12 annual spending bills in November, and clinching another five would remove the threat of a major shutdown.
When asked if the Senate would advance the minibus next week, Thune told the Washington Examiner, “We’ll see. Let’s hope so.”
As of now, the four Republicans blocking the minibus still have their holds in place, and it generally requires the consent of all 100 senators for spending measures to be bundled together.
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“We all have slightly different things that we’re emphasizing, but as a practical matter, it doesn’t matter, as long as one hold remains, it can’t proceed,” Lee said in an interview.
“I want to see a last look at the bill,” Kennedy said of his continued hold.
