Lawmakers face sticking points as looming shutdown deadline nears

Congressional negotiators face a series of hurdles in crafting legislation to fund the government as they add budget constraints and navigate partisan divides.

Spending cardinals in both chambers say they have made significant progress in spending negotiations as they finalize how the funds will be distributed, but say they have yet to address a list of partisan and controversial policy items.

And some problems are already starting to become apparent.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), one of the House’s 12 spending cardinals, cited areas such as “FBI and election security assistance” and the IRS as early issues in annual spending talks.

“We just don’t agree on assigning them to different marks,” Womack told The Hill last week. “Furthermore, we are not even on the policy rider path and there are currently a lot of loose ends that need to be resolved.”

The plagiarists say negotiations began in earnest soon after top negotiators reached an agreement that allowed both chambers to begin crafting a compromise spending bill that could pass a divided Congress.

But the two chambers entered negotiations with significantly different bills, as House Republicans pursued significantly lower spending levels than previously agreed to in the budget cap deal, while Senate Democrats raised the bar on a series of bills. .

“The House and Senate initially took very different approaches, but now they have to come together on things,” said Sen. Cardinal Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who heads the subcommittee that crafts the agency’s annual funding bill. ) said. The Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made the announcement this week.

The bill, which also targets funding for the Department of Education, is considered one of the most difficult to negotiate among the 12 annual funding bills, and has traditionally been the focus of policy fights in thorny areas such as abortion. It has become a battlefield.

Baldwin said there had been “some progress” in negotiations after a recent meeting with top negotiators from subcommittees in both chambers. But disposal executives also signaled there is still much work to do ahead of the two March closure deadlines.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the top Republican on the Senate subcommittee with Mr. Baldwin, said after this week’s meeting that discussions went “very well,” but that there were “pending” issues in the negotiations. also admitted.

“They’re obviously riders or something else,” Capito said. “Look, even if you can go, you’re back to square one.”

“I can’t say I’m stuck on a few big issues, but I’ve been able to figure out a lot of small issues and everything else,” she said.

The DOL and HHS funding bill is one of eight annual spending measures that lawmakers must pass by a March 8 deadline under a recent stopgap bill passed by Congress. Lawmakers also face a closer March 1 deadline to pass four other funding bills.

The March deadline comes after three stopgap funding bills to keep the government running as lawmakers continue to cut spending. A lack of either would put Congress at risk of shutting down a partial government for the first time in years.

Negotiators from both chambers say they are confident of completing the work by the deadline.

But there is bipartisan agreement that the partisan rider sought by House Republicans will make their job even harder.

Rep. Chuck Fleischman (R-Tenn.), one of the spending cardinals whose subcommittee funding bill is scheduled to expire at the first deadline, said Wednesday he is “optimistic” about reaching the early March deadline. , he said, adding that negotiations on the bill were progressing well and were “moving in the right direction.”

But Fleischman, whose subcommittee is responsible for funding the Department of Energy (DOE), said that the special deal his party is pushing in the subcommittee, in particular, “ultimately cannot be resolved at the committee level. There will be some problems,” he admitted. Future Bills.

Among the riders proposed as part of the DOE funding bill are measures targeting the Biden administration’s waterways rule, diversity and inclusion mandate, and other partisan policies.

“That’s probably going to be a consistent theme across all 12 bills, because we have very similar provisions, some of which are very important to us, and some of which are very important to the other side. “It’s very abhorrent for people,” Fleischman said.

“So these are issues and I think ultimately our leadership will address them,” he added.

At the same time, some negotiators see the last stopgap, also known as the continuing resolution (CR) passed in January, as potentially Congress’ last chance to buy time for talks. It has said.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time now. I think it’s another CR, but at some point you have to ask yourself, ‘What’s the use of it?’ So I think this is our last chance,” Sen. Cardinal Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in charge of funding the Pentagon in the Senate, said last week.

But other negotiators have warned that the timeline is tight.

Asked this week if she was confident Congress would meet the March funding deadline, Womack said she thinks “the incentive is there for us to get the job done.”

“The problem is, there’s still a lot of work to do,” he says. “But there are incentives, such as defense spending.”

“So, yeah, I guess I’ll give it a try.”