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(Trends Wide) — The US Congress faces a looming deadline at midnight this Friday, when government funding expires. In that sense, the House of Representatives and the Senate are expected to approve a short-term extension that avoids the closure, and that would give negotiators more time to try to secure a broader financing agreement that covers the entire year.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that senators should prepare to take “quick action” on a one-week extension that gives lawmakers more time to negotiate.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer said he anticipates “swift action” on a stopgap funding bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, “so we can give allocators more time to finish a full funding bill before the holidays.”
The other big piece of legislation that congressmen are trying to get done before the end of the year is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is expected to be voted on in the Senate this week and pass with bipartisan support.
The House of Representatives has already approved the measure, so when the Senate votes in favor of the bill it can go to President Joe Biden to sign it into law.
The approaching deadline to secure government funding prompted members of Congress and their staffs from both parties, as well as Biden administration officials, to continue negotiating over the weekend to try to reach an agreement on a spending package.
“This is the time of year where there are no weekends for people working on assignments,” an administration official closely involved in the talks told Trends Wide.
Over the weekend, both Democrats and Republicans shared their “balance sheets” with each other on various fronts, and the White House remained publicly optimistic about the possibility of reaching a comprehensive deal, also known as an omnibus: “There is absolutely still a way and time for a deal.”
Administration officials continue to maintain that they see no real likelihood of a government shutdown.
Congressional aides acknowledged to Trends Wide that the weekend talks were better than those of previous days, which is why Democrats have announced they will not present their own all-Democrat comprehensive plan this Monday. Republicans on Capitol Hill had been interpreting the threat of Democrats introducing their own bills as a messaging exercise that would only further divide the negotiators, and by avoiding that messaging exercise, Republicans see a sign that the Democrats are serious about trying to reach an agreement.
$26 billion difference, according to top Republican
For now, it remains difficult to reach a bipartisan agreement on government funding. Lawmakers have yet to be able to reach a negotiated deal on a global funding package for the year — known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus — amid a bipartisan dispute over how much money should be spent on non-national priorities. defense related. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters that the two sides are in dispute over about $26 billion.
Republicans criticize recent Democrat domestic spending and argue that measures passed by Democrats since they control both houses of Congress, such as the $1.9 trillion pandemic bill and the sweeping bill on health and climate, are wasteful and will worsen inflation. Democrats are fighting back by saying those measures were necessary to help the country recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic, as well as address other critical priorities. And Democrats said money to respond to covid, health care and weather shouldn’t mean there should be less money next year for government operations and domestic non-defense spending.
The leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, exposed his party’s position on the floor of the Senate on Thursday. “Our commander-in-chief and his party have spent enormous sums on national priorities outside of the normal appropriations process, with not a dime going to the Department of Defense. Obviously, we will not allow them now to also hijack the government funding process and take our troops.” hostage to even more liberal spending,” McConnell said.
The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, outlined his party’s argument in his own remarks Thursday. Republicans, Leahy said, are “demanding deep cuts to programs the American people trust.”
Referring to Democratic-passed legislation that Republicans have criticized, Leahy said: “Those bills were meant to get us out of the pandemic, clean up the nation and get our economy back on track, and I think they’re doing that. They weren’t. intended to finance the core functions of the US government in fiscal year 2023.”
Guidance on closure distributed to federal departments and agencies
As lawmakers continue to negotiate, the federal government has begun the process of preparing for a potential shutdown, participating in the mandatory but standard process of issuing closure guidelines to agencies before the funding deadline on Friday.
Officials have stressed that there is no real probability of a government shutdown, but the standard procedure outlining steps toward reducing non-essential government functions must be implemented.
“One week before the expiration of the appropriations bills, regardless of whether enactment of the appropriations appears imminent, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will contact senior agency officials to remind agencies of their responsibilities to review and update orderly closure plans, and will share a draft communication template to notify employees of the credit situation,” an Office of Management and Budget document states.
This standard guidance was distributed last Friday, seven days before a shutdown could occur if Congress doesn’t act.
Each department and agency has its own plans and procedures. These plans include information on how many employees will be laid off, which employees are essential and will be working without pay (for example, air traffic controllers, Secret Service agents, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab staff), how long it will take to reduce operations in the hours leading up to closing and what activities will stop.
— Ali Zaslav, Betsy Klein, Kristin Wilson and Lauren Fox contributed reporting.
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