LET’S MAKE
Back from break, Congress has
Congress returned Monday from its Thanksgiving break for one final attempt at deal-making for the year — with President Trump serving as a potential wild card.
COVID relief, a $1.4 trillion catchall spending package, and defense policy — and a final burst of judicial nominees — will dominate the next two- or three-week session as the coronavirus pandemic rockets out of control in the Republican president’s final weeks in office.
The only absolute must-do business is preventing a government shutdown when a temporary spending bill expires on Dec. 11. The route preferred by top lawmakers like 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 bitter divisions over a long-delayed COVID relief package that’s a top priority of business, state and local governments, educators and others.
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 a batch of leftovers such as extending expiring health care policies and tax provisions and continuing the authorization for the government’s flood insurance program.
Democrats have battled with Republicans and the White House for months over a fresh installment of COVID-19 relief that all sides say they want. But a lack of good faith and an unwillingness to embark on compromises that might lead either side out of their political comfort zones have helped keep another rescue package on ice.
The aid remains out of reach despite a fragile economy and as most of the nation is overwhelmed by the pandemic, especially in Midwest
GOP strongholds.
Negotiating for the White House, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin hasn’t shown much openness for politically difficult compromises required for a COVID-19 deal that might anger conservatives while Pelosi seems to have overplayed her hand as she held out for $2 trillion-plus right up until the election.
For all of the nonstarters, McConnell struck an optimistic note.
“There is no reason — none — that we shouldn’t deliver another major pandemic relief package,” McConnell said.
At stake is funding for vaccines and testing, reopening schools, various economic “stimulus” ideas like another round of “paycheck protection” subsidies for businesses especially hard hit by the pandemic. Failure to pass a measure now would vault the topic to the top of Biden’s legislative agenda next year.
A battle of wills 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 bases such as Fort Benning and Fort Hood, but Trump opposes the idea and has threatened a veto over it.
The battle erupted this summer amid widespread racial protests, and Trump used the debate to appeal to white Southern voters nostalgic about the Confederacy. 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.