(Bloomberg) -- The House is scheduled to vote late Tuesday on Republicans’ proposed stopgap spending bill to keep the government open until March 23 and provide full-year funding for the Defense Department, a provision that Democrats insist can’t pass in the Senate.
The House legislation, introduced Monday night, would avoid a shutdown after current funding ends at the end of the day Thursday. It would extend most government funding at current levels until March 23 but would lift budget caps to provide $659 billion for the Pentagon through the end of the fiscal year on Sept 30.
The measure doesn’t include lifting the U.S. debt ceiling even though the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts the Treasury can prevent a default only through early March.
The Defense Department funding is likely to be a sticking point in the Senate, where Democrats have the leverage to press their demand for a similar increase in domestic spending. However, neither side appears willing to force another government shutdown over the issue.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday there has been “significant progress” in talks on the budget caps, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also expressed optimism.
Still, McConnell indicated that, for the time being at least, his plan is to take up the stopgap measure with the year-long defense funding attached if the GOP-led House can muster the votes to muscle it through -- even as Schumer warned again that it “can’t pass in the Senate.”
Defense Money
“Senators on both sides of the aisle say they agree that our war fighters deserve sufficient, stable funding to fulfill the mission and tasks their country assigns them,” McConnell said. “Today each of us will have a chance to back that up with our vote.”
The House legislation, scheduled for a vote on Tuesday evening, also would authorize the Energy Department to make sales from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, extend financing for Community Health Care Centers for two years and make modifications to Medicare, such as repealing a payment cap for therapy services. The bill doesn’t contain a hurricane disaster relief package that has already passed the House and is stalled in the Senate.
Debt Ceiling
The Treasury Department has urged Congress to increase the debt limit this month. A measure to increase or suspend the debt ceiling could be added to other legislation before the end of the month.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reiterated at a House Financial Services Committee hearing that Treasury regards Feb. 28 as the deadline to lift the ceiling.
“I respectfully urge Congress to act as soon as possible,” Mnuchin said.
Republican Representative Bill Huizenga of Michigan said adding defense funding to the spending bill is the only way to get support from 218 Republicans to pass the stopgap funding measure in the House without Democratic support.
If the Senate strips out the defense spending provision, the House would have to vote again on the temporary funding legislation Wednesday or Thursday or push the government toward a shutdown.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Huizenga said.
Second Vote
House Democrats are already anticipating they will have to cut short their scheduled three-day issues retreat beginning Wednesday afternoon in Cambridge, Maryland, to return to the Capitol by week’s end and vote a second time on the short-term spending bill.
“The defense caps are not going to fly” in the Senate, said Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida. Those will be changed, he said, and the House will then have to vote on the bill again when batted back across the Capitol for final passage.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave a stern pitch for full-year Pentagon funding in testimony Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee. American troops are putting themselves in harm’s way “despite Congress’s abrogation of its constitutional responsibility to provide sufficient, stable funding,” he said.
Democrats say they want to keep defense and non-defense spending linked together for the full year in an effort to ensure equal increases. Republicans control the Senate 51-49, and spending bills need 60 votes to advance.
The short-term bill is the fifth stopgap since fiscal 2018 began on Oct. 1, because Republicans and Democrats have been unable to agree on a longer-term spending plan. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been negotiating on a broader budget bill that would raise budget caps set as part of a 2011 law.
Passing the short-term spending will likely be easier this time around after McConnell succeeded in sidelining the contentious issue of immigration.
Democrats’ effort to add deportation protections for about 700,000 young undocumented immigrants to the last spending bill led to a three-day government shutdown. McConnell has said he will allow the Senate to debate an immigration bill on its own after Friday if the government remains open.
