Congress will “likely” take up a three-month spending bill to keep the government funded until the GOP assumes power in Congress and the White House, aides said Wednesday.
Republican leaders declined to confirm their plan. Congress faces a Dec. 9 spending deadline and a weeklong Thanksgiving recess that starts Friday.
Recommended Stories
“We are working on how to fund the government,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Wednesday.
Capitol Hill aides confirmed the discussions about the short-term measure, which would fund the government at fiscal 2016 levels. It comes after an electoral upset that puts the GOP firmly in charge of the elected government next year.
A spending bill is the only must-pass piece of legislation for the Congress, which is set to adjourn for the year by mid-December. But the electoral upset and sudden looming shift in the balance of power has changed the outlook for fiscal 2017.
Many in the GOP want Republicans, who lead both the House and Senate, to move a short-term continuing resolution that would last until next year, when the GOP controls both Congress and the White House.
The election of Donald Trump has also added a new factor to the equation and will have significant input in the discussion about spending, according to GOP lawmakers.
“He’s pretty important,” Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday.
Passing a short-term spending bill would give the GOP the chance to author more conservative spending legislation for the remainder of fiscal 2017. But it’s not clear Senate Democrats, who have filibuster power, or President Obama, who wields the veto pen, would go along with a short term bill.
Before the election, the two sides were working on a plan to group spending bills in smaller packages or “minibuses,” a play on the “omnibus” package of all spending bills that Congress has come to rely on over the years.
Senate Democrats say they are left in the dark and are waiting on the GOP to make some decisions.
“Is it going to be a series of minibuses, is it going to be a CR?” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said. “We don’t know.”
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who is the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers had been working on a long term fiscal 2017 spending agreement in the weeks before the election, but it is unclear what will happen next.
“We are ready to go,” Mikulski said. “We’ve all been working regardless of who won. We are waiting for the Republicans to decide how they will proceed. When they make their decision, the new leadership and the current leaders will make a decision on what is the best strategy and tactics.”
