Spending impasse persists amid Republican resistance as partial shutdown looms
CONGRESSIONAL leaders have failed to reach a deal on legislation to keep federal funding going past Friday (Mar 1), with Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy dictates to the spending Bills, pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown within days.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said on Sunday that despite “intense discussions” that were continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance was raising the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight on Friday.
“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out,” Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With the uncertainty of how the House will pass the appropriations Bills and avoid a shutdown this week, I ask all senators to keep their schedules flexible, so we can work to ensure a pointless and harmful lapse in funding doesn’t occur.”
With no sign of a breakthrough, President Joe Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the US$95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed this month, which Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up.
But the more immediate task was to keep government spending from lapsing this week.
Three consecutive times over the past six months, Congress has relied on short-term stopgap spending Bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending flowing, essentially punting on a longer-term agreement for several weeks at a time.
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Each time, the Republican speaker – first Kevin McCarthy, then Johnson – has promised hard-right lawmakers that they would try to win more spending cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.
Now, with patience wearing thin among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Johnson, whose members want him to secure major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of enactment with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House.
Lawmakers in the House, which has been out of session for the past week, are set to return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a Friday deadline to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programmes.
Funding for all other agencies, including the Pentagon, is set to lapse at midnight on Mar 8.
In a statement on Sunday, Johnson said he had been labouring to reach a compromise.
“Despite the counterproductive rhetoric in Leader Schumer’s letter, the House has worked non-stop, and is continuing to work in good faith, to reach agreement with the Senate on compromise government funding bills in advance of deadlines,” Johnson said, adding: “This is not a time for petty politics.”
Negotiators have continued to haggle over a series of partisan policy mandates that House Republicans had loaded into their spending Bills, such as measures to restrict abortion access, that mainstream Republicans from competitive districts have refused to support.
Johnson in his statement on Sunday accused Senate Democrats of “attempting at this late stage to spend on priorities that are farther left than what their chamber agreed upon.”
Several House Republicans conceded weeks ago that they expected Johnson to have little success winning significant policy concessions. Johnson told Republicans on Friday during a conference call that they should not expect the inclusion of many of their major policy priorities, although he said he expected to secure a number of more minor victories, according to people familiar with the private discussion who described it on the condition of anonymity.
Part of the reason they would have to settle for less, Johnson explained, was that hard-right lawmakers had routinely blocked consideration of spending legislation, sapping the House’s leverage in talks with the Senate.
Instead, members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus have begun lobbying Johnson to instead pass a spending Bill that would impose across-the-board cuts.
“If we are not going to secure significant policy changes or even keep spending below the caps adopted by bipartisan majorities less than one year ago, why would we proceed when we could instead pass a year-long funding resolution that would save Americans US$100 billion in year one?” they wrote in a letter to Johnson last week.
They were referring to a provision of the fiscal agreement made by McCarthy and Biden in May that would cut federal spending 1 per cent across the board on Apr 30 if Congress could not reach a government-wide spending deal before then.
But, senators in both parties are determined to avoid that scenario because the cuts would particularly affect Pentagon spending. NYTIMES
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