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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., talks with reporters after he spoke on the Senate floor Monday, Nov. 9 at the Capitol. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
AP
Headed into the home stretch of the legislative work year, lawmakers on Tuesday began mulling how to wrap up Congress’s three main priorities — another big coronavirus financial aid bill, funding for the rest of the government’s budget year, and an annual defense policy bill.
How the three items will interact in negotiations is unclear, but unlike before the Thanksgiving holiday, at least congressional leaders and rank-and-file members are engaged again.
The first big deadline is Dec. 11, when the current stopgap funding bill passed before the Nov. 3 election runs out. Unless extended or replaced by a full-year agreement through September 2021, the government will shut down starting Dec. 12.
At the same time, lawmakers are facing public pressure to give the economy another big shot of fiscal stimulus, even before the Biden administration takes office in January. Tuesday saw the biggest hint yet that a funding bill and another fiscal stimulus could be combined.
“Obviously, given the challenges of moving things across the Senate floor speedily, that would be a vehicle to add on whatever coronavirus we know will get a presidential signature,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters after Senate Republicans held their first virtual weekly party lunch since the pandemic began.
McConnell said he had talked with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on what could garner Trump’s signature and shared that information with fellow Republican senators. Earlier in the day, a group of bipartisan, bicameral lawmakers proposed their own program. And McConnell said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer had sent him an offer Monday night.
Notably, Schumer did not endorse the hybrid stimulus/funding approach, telling reporters, “Let me just say, I hope McConnell will start doing things in a bipartisan way. Every time he’s tried to do it in a partisan way, it has failed.”
Given a funding bill must pass before the end of Dec. 11, attaching a coronavirus bill or elements of a could be seen as a way to ram it through. But it could also cause problems for the funding bill, which has seen some progress on negotiations since last week.
“We feel confident there is a deal to be had on full year appropriations bills by the time the current CR runs out on December 11,” a House Democratic aide told Marketwatch.com.
And while the aide said some elements – extending current pandemic policies on unemployment eligibility, student loan repayment deferments and a moratorium on evictions – were possible for a funding bill with stimulus elements, the chances for a larger deal with even more help, were rising.
Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he had been proposing putting the two items together.
“Put it all together and create a lot of votes and a lot of critical mass. You know how that works around here. Now some people probably said, ‘Oh no, we aren’t going to vote for it,’ this and that. We’re not there yet,” he said.
If a funding/stimulus bill gets done soon, lawmakers can sort through the other big item on their to-do list: a fiscal 2021 defense policy bill. While the bill does not directly appropriate money to the Defense Department, it lays out the policies for which funding can be provided and has been passed every year for about 60 years now.
The bill was held up by a controversy over renaming some military installations currently named for Confederate-era figures. But it also includes many more provisions, including language to make it easier for law enforcement to track down the owners of shell companies, companies that exist on paper only and sometimes used in money laundering.
Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican and former Army Reservist, said, “We do have the National Defense Authorization Act that is hanging in the balance. We need to work together we ensure we get this completed.”
“I’m just encouraging our Democrats to come back to the table, let’s work through these issues and let’s get the NDAA done,” she said.
