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A sheet of freshly printed one-dollar bills is ready for inspection at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington. (Getty Images)
Usually, the need to wrap up annual bills to fund the government is a necessary but wearisome chore for lawmakers. This year, though, it could be crucial to helping the economy.
That’s because the stopgap bill funding the government is set to expire Dec. 11, a date sandwiched almost evenly between the Nov. 3 election and the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration. With a new bill needed to keep the government’s lights on and the election over, the next temporary funding bill could be crucial to getting at least some stalled economic stimulus enacted into law.
So-called continuing resolutions have long been used as legislative vehicles for other priorities in the past. And they are hardy perennials — Congress has not completed annual appropriations on time, before the new budget year starts on Oct. 1, since 1996, when it got all 13 fiscal 1997 bills done. Since then, there’s been at least one CR annually, according to the Congressional Research Service.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also mused publicly about the idea of doing stimulus in the next CR.
“I came down a trillion dollars and then another $200 billion. Not that we eliminated priorities, but we changed the time table for how long that would last. And then we took some things out and put them in the appropriations bill because that’s imminent now, too,” Pelosi said in describing stimulus talks in an MSNBC interview Oct. 2.
“It’s so late that that’s imminent, that we have to come to terms once again to keep government open,” she said.
Scott Mulhauser, partner and public affairs lead at Bully Pulpit Interactive, who helped run the Senate Finance Committee for the Democrats from 2009 to 2012, said Democrats in particular will want a deal, whether soon or in the post-election lame-duck session.
“If the deal can’t get done pre-election, the chances to land it in the lame-duck Congress at the end of the year are higher than many think,” he said in an email.
“That opportunity post-election could be the last shot for Trump and McConnell to put feathers in their caps while letting Democrats focus on relief and clear big fights off the docket, allowing a potential new president and new Congress to get to work on next steps next year.”
Pelosi, who set a Tuesday end-of-day deadline to reach a deal if it was to pass Congress by Election Day, said Monday night on MSNBC that the negotiators would “exchange all of our differences of opinion” and see where to go from there.
“We may not like this or we may not like that, but let’s see, on balance, if we can go forward,” she said.
She said the White House had agreed to much — though not all — of Democratic-proposed language on coronavirus testing and tracing, a long-standing sticking point in the talks.
“They came back and they’re agreeing to that,” she said.
On Monday morning, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff for the White House, told reporters at the White House they had increased their offer to almost $1.9 trillion, about $300 billion short of the Democratic position.
“It’s been really the speaker that continues to be very rigid in her negotiation. It’s her way or the highway, it’s all or nothing,” Meadows said.
“I haven’t seen real movement on her part. All we’ve been doing is trying to provide additional areas of relief where we can compromise. “
Still, Chris Krueger, a strategist with Cowen Washington Research Group, said in a client note Monday he remained doubtful of a lame-duck pact.
“Phase 4 in the Lame Duck is possible, but probably only likely if Trump wins…otherwise, waiting for President Biden in late January,” he wrote.
And even if Pelosi and Mnuchin come to an agreement, there is no guarantee it could pass the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the size of the deals the pair are bargaining over is too expensive for Republicans. He plans to offer two much smaller bills in the middle of the week for possible consideration.
Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said Monday a big bill like the one the White House and House Democrats are talking about would be unlikely to garner the 13 Republican votes needed to proceed to a floor vote.
“It’d be hard,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill.
