Washington Insider: Congress Faces September Budget Scramble

The Hill is reporting this week that Congress faces a September scramble ahead of an end-of-the-month deadline to avoid a government shutdown.Lawmakers are scheduled to return to the Capitol today, giving them just a matter of weeks to clear spending legislation while juggling other high-profile fights like the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.Senators, who stayed in Washington instead of taking their usual August recess, have made quick work of their funding packages, passing nine out of the 12 individual appropriations bills. But, lawmakers still need to clear the remaining “political landmines” from several House bills, The Hill says.GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, acknowledged that “We’ve got a month. If the House cooperates, we can work together,” he said.In the Senate, an agreement between Shelby and appropriations Vice Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., was used to keep partisan “poison pills” out of the appropriations process. House Republicans, on the other hand, used their bills to take aim at ObamaCare and abortion with measures that are non-starters in the Senate where Democratic support is needed to fund the government.For example, Senators pigeonholed an amendment from GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas that would have prevented D.C. from establishing its own individual mandate for health insurance. The House included a similar provision in their Financial Services bill, which funds the District.The upper chamber also rejected an amendment from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have stripped Planned Parenthood of federal funding in legislation funding the Department of Health and Human Services. The House included such a provision in its committee-passed HHS bill.GOP leaders in the two chambers have agreed on one issue, The Hill said. Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan R-Wis., have indicated they want to wait to approve funding the Department of Homeland Security until after the midterm elections to avoid a potentially explosive fight over funding for the President’s border wall.But that contentious issue looms over the broader funding bill. The President has threatened to veto spending legislation that doesn’t fund his proposal. Democrats have held out the prospect of wall funding as part of a broader immigration deal and are unlikely to lend their support without getting significant concessions in return.Beyond policy riders, disagreements remain over key questions such as whether to bypass agreed-upon spending caps in funding a veteran’s health program.And, even if Congress sends the nine bills to Trump’s desk, lawmakers will need a continuing resolution to fund those parts of the government addressed in the remaining bills past the end of September. The stopgap is likely to go into December but leadership hasn’t yet worked out the details of a short-term bill to fund part of the government until late December.Senators are hoping to limit the short-term bill to the three bills that the chamber has not yet taken up: Department of Homeland Security, Commerce, Science and Justice and a bill for State and Foreign Operations but that package could swell if they are unable to get an agreement with the House on already passed legislation.Shelby said that senators were trying to avoid a larger Continuing Resolution and that it boiled down to what sort of agreement they could get from the House.Ryan, who is retiring at the end of the year, faces additional pressure from within his own ranks. Passing large spending bills with the support of Democrats is sure to rile House conservatives, who are already jockeying over who will lead their caucus in the next Congress.Finally, the President has created another roadblock for Republicans. Earlier this year, amid backlash from his base, the president threatened to veto the omnibus legislation that combined spending bills for FY 2018 into one, and said he wouldn’t sign a similar piece of legislation again.So, the Senate has put a premium on passing “minibus” packages, which roll a few bills into one and devoting weeks of Senate floor time to getting the funding measures cleared in the chamber where Republicans are eager to show they can govern.“This is about omnibus prevention…” McConnell told the press. He added that the Senate has now passed legislation funding roughly 90 percent of the government and if they are able to conference their bills with the House before the end of September that could resonate with voters before the midterms.So, we will see. Debates on many issues are enormously toxic this year, including trade policy, as well as the budget and spending. These all are high stakes fights for producers and should be watched closely as they continue, Washington Insider believes.