With an agreement over just how toxic next year's government spending bill is going to be not yet reached, it looks like Congress will decide to give itself some extra time. Spending runs out this Friday at midnight, and now leadership wants to extend that deadline. Just five days, but they think that will be enough to finish up the negotiating.
On Wednesday, House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., made the first step to give everyone a bit more time to figure it all out as he introduced a short-term continuing resolution that extends current funding levels through midnight on Dec. 16th."There's a lot of unresolved issues," Rogers said. "Some of them are being handled by leadership and then a whole host of others will be considered at the committee level. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us. We are making progress."
Potential language addressing the certification process for Syrian refugees, the so-called Waters of the United States regulation for inland waterways and a provision related to conscience clauses regarding coverage of abortion-related services are among the issues leadership is negotiating, Rogers said.
The House will start the process of bringing the five-day bill to the floor Thursday afternoon in the Rules Committee, readying it for passage on Friday. Democrats are expected to support it, and the White House has given its okay for a short-term extension. What isn't clear yet is if the problem children of the House, the Republican Freedom Caucus, will go along with it. They've been clamoring for a six-week short-term bill, saying they'll have more leverage against Democrats and President Obama if they don't have the holiday deadline hanging over them. Or maybe they think the optics of forcing a shutdown in January aren't quite as awful for them as doing it two weeks before Christmas.
Aside from the broad issues outlined above, the negotiators are being remarkably tight-lipped, or as The Hill says, "nebulous." The poison pills rumored to be creating the most conflict change practically every day, from trying to roll back a National Labor Relations Board ruling to further gutting campaign finance restrictions (Mitch McConnell's pet project) to privacy-gutting cybersecurity legislation (Paul Ryan's project). What seems to be definitely out is Planned Parenthood defunding.
What remains to be seen Thursday and Friday of this week is whether the Freedom Caucus are going to be willing to play along.
