WASHINGTON — Appropriations Committee leaders distributed spending allocations to their dozen subcommittees on Thursday, sources familiar with the talks said, one of the last steps before lawmakers and staff can finish drafting the sprawling omnibus package they plan to unveil Monday afternoon.
The measure will start in the Senate, where the plan is to attach it to a shell vehicle the House sent over on Wednesday. House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro expressed confidence that her chamber will be able to clear the omnibus once it comes back to her side of the Capitol.
“We’re going to get an omnibus next week,” DeLauro, D-Conn., said Thursday. “I’m resolute. I can’t account for crazy things that come up, but that’s my goal.”
While the regular or “base” subcommittee allocations appeared settled, there was at least one outstanding issue on the emergency funding title appropriators are planning to add.
President Joe Biden has already asked for tens of billions of dollars to respond to the war in Ukraine and natural disasters. But lawmakers are also trying to respond to a separate administration request for a $3.5 billion increase over last year to help the Department of Homeland Security handle management of the southern border.
Given Democrats had to trim their regular nondefense allocations, appropriators are discussing adding border funding to the supplemental package that’s under consideration. Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Chair Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., said there’s still no bipartisan agreement on that front yet, however.
“There’s still a whole bunch of Republicans that are rooting for chaos on the border,” Murphy said. “We just need to … make sure we have enough money to let the border guards do their job.”
Senate Appropriations ranking member Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., wouldn’t comment on the border dispute, except to say: “Well, we haven’t crystallized everything yet.”
How to treat veterans health care funds within appropriators’ toplines had been a sticking point until panel leaders agreed to a spending framework on Tuesday night.
Both parties have been pushing hefty increases for VA health care, but Republicans have wanted to keep a lid on other nondefense accounts to preserve room. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., said Thursday that negotiators had agreed to make a portion of the funding “mandatory” so it wouldn’t count against appropriators’ discretionary allocations.
Appropriators were still awaiting decisions from leadership about what goes into the “ash and trash” title of the omnibus — appropriations-speak for unrelated legislation from authorizing committees that often gets tacked on to a moving year-end vehicle.
Current stopgap funding is set to expire at midnight Friday, but the House passed another continuing resolution Wednesday to extend funding through Dec. 23. And the Senate is working to pass that measure Thursday if they can get a unanimous consent agreement to streamline the process, said Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer.
“We should have no drama, no gridlock and no delay in passing a weeklong CR,” Schumer said on the floor. The Senate voted 75-20 Thursday afternoon to proceed to the measure.
A group of conservative GOP senators, including Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were asking for at least two amendment votes on the CR in exchange for speeding up passage.
They want one that would cut funding for the IRS and another that would extend the stopgap measure’s expiration date to March 3, when Republicans believe they’ll be better positioned to secure policy wins in the spending package since they’ll control the House.
Lee, who is offering the date change amendment, explained in a lengthy Twitter thread that it was also about allowing lawmakers to consider “the yet-to-be-seen, 3,000-page omnibus on its own merits, and without the threat of a Christmas shutdown clouding their judgment.” His frustration signals he may also slow down consideration of the omnibus next week.
“If those advocating for the omnibus can’t make their case for it without threatening a shutdown on Christmas Eve, one has to wonder what they’re hiding,” Lee said. “Members of Congress shouldn’t pass any bill absent an adequate opportunity to know what they’re enacting, who benefits from it, and who might be harmed —especially a bill that is 3,000 pages long, contains 7,500 earmarks, and spends nearly $1.7 TRILLION.”
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Thursday afternoon that Democrats were likely to grant those amendments — and possibly a third that “addresses earmarks in some fashion” — at a 60-vote threshold. Johnson said the conservatives don’t need to have a vote on the earmark amendment on the CR, just assurance they could get one in the future.
Democrats were also seeking unanimous consent for a Thursday vote on the motion to proceed to the shell bill that the Senate will use as the vehicle for the the omnibus, Thune said. But he said he’s not sure Republicans would agree to that.
Shelby said final passage of the CR could come Thursday night. “They said we’re gonna be here a while,” he said.
No details of the omnibus framework deal have been disclosed, but it is expected to provide close to $1.7 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal 2023, including about $858 billion for defense and a still-undetermined amount of emergency aid for Ukraine and natural disasters.
The omnibus bill is set to begin in the Senate, where bipartisan support is critical because the Democratic majority lacks the 60 votes needed to advance legislation on their own. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., set a Dec. 22 deadline for Senate action. The House could then follow suit by Dec. 23, barring a delay.
With the Senate moving first on the omnibus, the House won’t return for votes until next Wednesday evening, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., announced on the floor. “The House is also expected to meet on Thursday Dec. 22 and will stay in session until the omnibus is completed,” he said.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the government funding deadline now bumping up against Christmas — assuming the Senate clears the House-passed continuing resolution through Dec. 23 — is “not a tactic” for pressuring lawmakers to accept a bipartisan deal they may not like.
“We’d like to have done it much sooner,” she told reporters at her weekly press conference.
Progressive lawmakers are signaling they aren’t likely to pose a problem for House passage of the omnibus, even though many were seeking a smaller level of defense funding than what the compromise provides.
“We never liked this, but the reality is we also know we have to get this done because … a one-year CR would be terrible for people in this country,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., referring to the fallback option of a yearlong stopgap measure that would constrain both defense and nondefense spending.
