Two roads diverged in a lame-duck spending endgame

WASHINGTON — Congress is about to buy itself about three months’ worth of extra time to work out a final spending agreement for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. But the leadership of both chambers are operating under very different assumptions about what lawmakers can accomplish before the Dec. 20 deadline in the new stopgap funding bill.

While what happens in November remains up in the air, as congressional leaders prepare their troops for the campaign’s homestretch, they are sticking to their talking points.

House Republican leaders, outwardly confident about winning the White House, keeping the House and flipping the Senate, want to quickly wrap up in December by passing another stopgap bill into the new year.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told his conference Tuesday that there won’t be a Christmas omnibus. He said the same thing to reporters while also scolding the Senate for not passing individual appropriations bills — a common complaint but not a realistic expectation at this point in the year.

“We’re not going to do any ‘buses,’” Johnson said, using Hill-speak for omnibus spending packages or smaller “minibus” combinations. “We’ll deal with that in the lame duck.”

Johnson initially wanted a continuing resolution running through March 28; he was forced to backtrack after Republicans rebelled against his bill to pair a March extension with a tough voter ID measure.

Other Republicans would accept an earlier end-date, such as Feb. 6. But many do not want to end the session backed up against Christmas being forced to vote on a huge catchall package with little time to read it.

“It’s tough when you are negotiating against everybody going home,” House Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern said Tuesday.

Democratic leaders in both chambers, not to mention some GOP appropriators, prefer to finish up all the full-year spending bills, clearing the decks for the incoming administration rather than dumping a mess into the next Congress’ lap.

“I hope once we get this CR passed, we can all skip that drama, get to the negotiating table, and cut to the chase to write serious, bipartisan full-year funding bills that can get signed into law,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Tuesday.

Hern, R-Okla., said Senate Democrats’ stance was predictable, with polls showing they could very well lose control of that chamber as West Virginia looks set to flip and Jon Tester, D-Mont., might lose as well. He said Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., undoubtedly will want to get as much done as possible under his party’s watch while he can.

“It looks like the Senate is going to be lost, so it will be [Schumer’s] last hurrah to make a splash,” Hern said. “We’ll see what he does going out.”

‘Yesterday’s diapers’

Some Republican appropriators in both chambers are on board with finishing up spending bills this year.

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the presidential victor would dictate whether the process should be completed in December or wait until next year when they take control. But whomever wins would be better off with a clean slate, Cole said.

“The idea that we should give them a funding crisis and a potential government shutdown to worry about in the first couple of months, seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility,” Cole said.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., another Appropriations Committee member, said he does not think the incoming administration should have to deal with “yesterday’s diapers.”

“The first 100 days of an administration make a big difference,” said Zinke, who was Interior secretary during former President Donald Trump’s first term. “So what I want to do is make sure those 100 days are well spent, and not encumbered with diapers from last year, which will be a distraction.”

Even if both sides agreed to wrap up in the lame duck, however, there will be little time and many differences and competing priorities.

There will be five weeks in session, interrupted by a week off for Thanksgiving. Lawmakers will also be working to complete a multiyear farm bill and the annual defense policy measure.

There will likely be leadership elections in both chambers. If Johnson’s party loses the House, he will face pressure to relinquish his post. If the GOP remains in control, he’ll face another speaker election in January with a possibly even slimmer margin and some Republicans already pledging to oppose him.

On the Senate side, Republicans John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas are vying to replace the current GOP leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is stepping down. Cornyn and Thune have been quiet about their plans for the appropriations process, but neither share McConnell’s long history on, and affinity for, that committee.

Topline disparity

Then there are the substantive funding and policy differences. The two chambers are nearly $90 billion apart on overall discretionary spending, for instance, and that was before the administration identified a $12 billion veterans health care shortfall.

Cole and GOP leaders tried to stay close to the statutory caps agreed to in last year’s debt limit package, avoiding extra spending contained in side deals negotiated by the White House and congressional leaders. Murray and her ranking member, Susan Collins, R-Maine, have instead incorporated those side agreements and then some, including a huge infusion of extra emergency-designated funds that don’t trigger spending cap violations.

Assuming a topline deal is reached, it typically takes lawmakers and staff seven to eight weeks to get from that bare-bones framework to final bills that can pass in both chambers. That’s more than the five weeks left in the session after members return after the elections on Nov. 12. Any delays on reaching a topline deal later into November would make final spending bills impossible to pass before the Dec. 20 deadline in the stopgap measure lawmakers are likely to clear on Wednesday.

The hand that Johnson is left to play after the elections will determine whether he’s even capable of cutting such a deal. Agreeing to the funding increases Democrats want while dropping conservative policy riders would upset the conference’s right flank and make it harder for Johnson to stick around, even if Republicans win.

The new House Freedom Caucus chair, Andy Harris, R-Md., says GOP leaders should push off final decisions into next year if Democrats are going to maintain their current position. “If the Democrats insist on over $100 billion in spending above [the spending caps], I think it should be pushed into next year,” said Harris, who’s also the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee chairman.

And if there’s an agreement to pass a wrap-up package, there are numerous individual funding items within any topline agreement that are already dividing the parties.

The White House’s statement of administration policy supporting the stopgap measure on Tuesday listed several top priorities omitted from that temporary bill to address in the lame duck. That includes the missing VA health care money, a disaster relief package, funding to avert a Social Security Administration shortfall and preventing additional clawbacks of IRS enforcement resources.

Finally, there remains the possibility of litigated election results and associated political unrest that could take up lawmakers’ attention.

“I think there’s a lot that’s going to happen between now and December, so I think it’s a little hard to handicap whether we are going to get the work done,” Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., said. “We need to let intervening events play out first.”