Senate shifts focus to short-term spending bill with ‘minibus’ negotiations stalled

The Senate will turn its attention to passing a short-term funding bill next week after appropriators failed to satisfy the demands of conservatives blocking one of their yearlong spending measures.

The chamber returned from August recess with plans to pass what’s known as a minibus, a bill wrapping together three of its 12 annual appropriations bills. The legislation made its way through committee earlier this year with unanimous support, yet the power of a single senator to halt Senate business is preventing the measure from coming to the floor.

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The Senate hoped the process would be a shining example of bipartisanship, one that stood in stark contrast to the chaos underway in the House, where Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is enduring open rebellion over spending bills that hard-liners say are not conservative enough.

Yet after two weeks of gridlock in the upper chamber and just one week before a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government, Senate leadership is negotiating a bill known as a continuing resolution that would buy lawmakers more time.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, announced on Tuesday that she and her Republican counterpart, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), were working toward a stopgap that, in addition to extending government funding at current levels, would provide additional aid for Ukraine and replenish the country’s disaster relief fund.

The Senate can expect the same sort of gridlock seen with the minibus, however, if they put forward much more than a “clean” continuing resolution. Already, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has promised to withhold his consent if the deal includes Ukraine money, a sore spot among Trump-aligned conservatives who want to see an end to the conflict.

It has yet to be finalized what provisions will be attached, according to one Senate aide.

“Leader McConnell and I are talking, and we have a great deal of agreement on many parts of this,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told CNN. “It’s never easy to get a big bill, a CR bill done, but I am very, very optimistic that McConnell and I can find a way and get a large number of votes, both Democratic and Republican, in the Senate.”

Even if leadership decides to avoid a fight over Ukraine, time is still short to get a bill done. The Senate won’t be in session until Tuesday and ordinarily departs on Thursdays.

That would leave just three days to unveil a bill, get all 100 senators to agree to expedite it, and vote on a series of amendments and then final passage.

If conservatives do blockade the bill, leadership can run out the clock and push it through anyway, but doing so would flirt with a government shutdown.

Ordinarily, the House would move first on a continuing resolution. That had been McCarthy’s plan, but a handful of conservatives, who hold outsize sway given his four-seat majority, want the speaker to work through the appropriations bills one by one at spending levels lower than previously proposed before consenting.

Schumer on Thursday teed up a shell bill that will be used for the Senate’s continuing resolution, with the first procedural vote to be held on Tuesday evening.

If the bill passes, that does not make a shutdown any less likely. The two chambers are far apart on funding levels, and McCarthy wants deal sweeteners on issues like border security. Any continuing resolution that includes Ukraine aid, a priority for both parties in the Senate, would also be a nonstarter for House Republicans.

There would be additional pressure on McCarthy though if, negotiating amid a shutdown, the Senate has passed a funding bill and the House has not. With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, the House is not exactly in a position to make big demands. Sending a continuing resolution to the lower chamber would shore up Schumer’s negotiating position even further.

Despite the ambivalence of some House conservatives to the prospect of a shutdown, Senate Republicans are far more sensitive to the likely political blowback. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), one of the final conservatives blocking the minibus, initially wanted it broken into three separate measures. But he is now content to release his hold if he gets a vote on the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, which would automatically keep the government funded using a continuing resolution and mandate that lawmakers stay in Washington until a compromise is reached.

“We can get rid of this form of congressional gridlock forever,” he said. “How could you vote ‘no’ on that?”

Democratic leadership has not committed to a vote on the measure. Neither have they agreed to the demands of Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), who wants a vote on his bill dealing with credit card swipe fees.

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Marshall says he got assurances from leadership that it would be voted on this Congress, though appropriators balk at his request, noting the bill has not passed through committee yet.

The Senate could overcome their holds by suspending what’s known as Rule 16, but an attempt to do so failed earlier this week as Republicans urged leadership to give Collins more time to work out a solution with the holdouts.