Congress returns to unresolved issues
Menu of year-end business remains a challenging battle for both sides
WASHINGTON — After months of a tense and toxic campaign, Capitol Hill’s main players are returning for a final attempt at deal-making on a challenging menu of year-end business.
COVID-19 relief, a $1.4 trillion catchall spending package and defense policy, and a final burst of judicial nominees, dominate a truncated session occurring as the coronavirus pandemic rockets out of control in President Donald Trump’s final weeks in office.
The only absolute must-do business is preventing a government shutdown when a temporary spending bill expires Dec. 11. The route preferred by such top lawmakers as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is to agree upon and pass an omnibus spending bill for the government. But it may be difficult to overcome divisions on a long-delayed COVID-19 relief package.
Time is working against lawmakers, as is the Capitol’s emerging status as a COVID-19 hotspot, and it’ll take serious, good-faith conversations among top players to determine what’s possible. Top items for December’s lame-duck session: KEEPING THE GOVERNMENT OPEN: At a bare minimum, lawmakers need to pass a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution, which would punt $1.4 trillion worth of unfinished agency spending into next year.
But McConnell and Pelosi, two veterans of the Capitol’s appropriations culture, are pressing hard for a catchall spending package. At issue are a battle over adding $12 billion to domestic programs for rapidly growing veterans health care spending and Trump’s demands for U.S.-Mexico border wall funding.
Getting Trump to sign the measure is another challenge. Both sides would like to clear the pile of unfinished legislation to give the Biden administration a fresh start, but the change in administrations probably wouldn’t affect an omnibus deal much.
At issue are the 12 annual spending bills comprising the portion of the government’s budget that passes through Congress each year on a bipartisan basis. Whatever approach passes, it’s likely to contain unfinished leftovers, such as extending expiring health care policies and continuing authorization for the government’s flood insurance program.
COVID-19 RELIEF: Democrats have battled Republicans and the White House for months over a new installment of COVID-19 relief that all sides say they want. But an unwillingness to embark on compromises has helped keep another rescue package on ice.
The aid remains out of reach despite a fragile economy and out-of-control increases in coronavirus cases. McConnell hasn’t shown much openness for politically difficult compromises required for a COVID-19 deal that might anger conservatives. Neither have McConnell’s warnings of a wave of COVID-related lawsuits against businesses, schools and nonprofits open during the pandemic come to pass, undercutting his demand for protections against such suits.
The results of the election, which saw Democrats lose seats in the House, appear to have significantly undercut Pelosi’s position, but she is holding firm on another round of aid to state and local governments.
Before the election, Trump seemed to be focused on sending another round of $1,200 payments to most Americans. But the chief obstacles now appear to be Pelosi’s demand for state and local government aid, and McConnell’s demand for a liability shield for businesses reopening during the pandemic.
At stake is funding for vaccines and testing, reopening schools and various economic “stimulus” ideas, such as another round of “paycheck protection” subsidies for businesses hit especially hard by the pandemic. Failure to pass a measure now would vault the topic to the top of Biden’s legislative agenda next year.
DEFENSE POLICY: A spat over military bases named for Confederate officers is threatening the annual passage of a defense policy measure that has passed for 59 years in a row on a bipartisan basis. The measure is critical in the defense policy world, guiding Pentagon policy and cementing decisions about troop levels, new weapons systems and military readiness, military personnel policy and other military goals.
Both the House and Senate measures would require the Pentagon to rename such bases as Fort Benning and Fort Hood, but Trump has threatened to veto it. It’s a live issue in two Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will determine control of the chamber during the first two years of Biden’s tenure.