Border wall funds imperil budget progress in Congress

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a long-overdue, $209 billion bundle of bipartisan spending bills Thursday, but a bitter fight over funding demanded by President Donald Trump for border fencing imperils broader Capitol Hill efforts to advance $1.4 trillion worth of annual Cabinet agency budgets.

The 84-9 vote sends the measure into House-Senate negotiations but doesn’t much change the big picture. There has been little progress, if any, on the tricky trade-offs needed to balance Democratic demands for social programs with President Donald Trump’s ballooning border wall demands.

To amplify the point, Democrats shortly thereafter filibustered a much larger measure anchored by the $695 billion Pentagon funding bill, protesting Trump’s plans to again transfer billions of dollars from the Pentagon to the border wall project. The mostly partyline vote triggered a familiar round of finger-pointing.

“This delay is because they insist on including in this bill authority for President Trump to raid American tax dollars from our military — money that is intended for specific military priorities — to pay for his wall, which he promised that Mexico would pay for,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, DVt. “And that is unacceptable.”

The budget pact blended a must-do increase in the government’s borrowing cap with relief from the return of stinging automatic budget cuts known as sequestration that were left over from a long-failed 2011 budget deal.

At issue are the agency appropriations bills that

Congress passes each year to keep the government running. The hard-won budget and debt deal this summer produced a topline framework for the 12 yearly spending bills, but filling in the details is proving difficult.

While it appears likely that lawmakers will prevent a government shutdown next month with a government-wide stopgap spending bill, the impasse over agency appropriations bills shows no signs of breaking.

Democrats say White House demands for $5 billion for Trump’s longsought U.S.-Mexico border wall have led the GOP-controlled Senate to shortchange Democratic domestic priorities.

They say negotiations can’t begin in earnest until spending hikes permitted under the July budget deal are allocated among the 12 appropriations subcommittees more to their liking. Trump is demanding a huge border funding increase that comes mostly at the expense of a major health and education spending bill.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said Democrats “seem more focused on scoring political

points than ensuring our military has the certainty and funding it needs to counter our adversaries.”

“I am not optimistic,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. “I don’t see the Senate taking action that would enable us to have an active negotiation with them. They haven’t set the groundwork. And until they figure out the (subcommittee allocations) — although we are having very nice conversations — I don’t see progress.”

Current stopgap spending authority expires Nov. 21, and another measure will be needed to prevent a shutdown reprising last year’s 35-day partial shuttering of the government. All sides want to avert a repeat shutdown, but it can’t be entirely ruled out because of the dysfunction and bitterness engulfing Washington these days.

Staff discussions on a new stopgap continuing resolution haven’t yielded agreement yet. Democrats, including Lowey, have floated the idea of a stopgap continuing resolution into February, which would likely punt the budget battle past any Senate impeachment trial.