HOUSE APPROVES STOPGAP SPENDING
Passage likely avoids shutdown just before election
WASHINGTON
The House overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan bill late Tuesday to keep the government funded through early December and avoid a shutdown just before the election.
The 359-57 vote sends the legislation to the Senate, which could take it up later this week and send it to President Donald Trump. White House officials say they don’t want a shutdown, and Trump is expected to sign the bill, though he’s wavered at the last minute in such scenarios in the past.
The deal was negotiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-san Francisco, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a chaotic series of events over the past several days. Talks abruptly collapsed late Friday just as a deal appeared within reach, and Pelosi released a partisan bill on Monday that was swiftly rejected by Republicans. But on Tuesday morning Pelosi and Mnuchin resumed negotiations, and Pelosi announced late Tuesday that they had reached a deal.
The sticking point was demands from the Trump administration and Republicans — along with a handful of largely farm-state House Democrats — for an infusion of money into a farm bailout program that Trump has used to repay farmers hurt by his trade policies. In exchange for agreeing to the farm bailout money, Pelosi secured about $8 billion for a variety of nutrition programs, including for schoolchildren impacted by the coronavirus pandemic — a significantly larger sum than had been on the table on Friday.
The short-term spending legislation — known as a “continuing resolution,” or CR — would keep government funded through Dec. 11.
“We have reached an agreement with Republicans on the CR to add nearly $8 billion in desperately needed nutrition assistance for hungry schoolchildren and families,” Pelosi said. “Democrats secured urgently needed assistance for schoolchildren to receive meals despite the coronavirus’s disruption of their usual schedules.”
There was no immediate comment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., but in light of the strong vote in the House, the Senate looked likely to approve the legislation.
Congress needs to pass a spending bill by Sept. 30, the last day in the 2020 fiscal year, or large portions of the government would begin to shut down. The bill also must be signed by Trump ahead of the shutdown deadline.
Even with much attention on Capitol Hill focused on the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there was little appetite on either side for brinkmanship around a government shutdown.
Republicans secured provisions in the stopgap spending bill to replenish a $30 billion borrowing fund called the Commodity Credit Corporation, a New Deal-era program that Trump has used to reimburse farmers harmed by his trade policies and tariffs. Democratic leaders opposed the additional money, partly because they say Trump could use it for political purposes.
At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week, Trump announced a new package of aid for farmers from the
CCC, which he has used in an unprecedented way to distribute largesse. Under previous administrations, the CCC was used for much more limited purposes, and some Democrats charge that Trump has essentially turned it into a slush fund.
But there are also several endangered House Democrats who support the program, including Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, freshmen members who flipped Gop-held seats in 2018 and now face tough re-election races. Axne and Finkenauer both signed a letter along with Iowa’s two Republican senators, Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst, blasting exclusion of the CCC money and declaring, “Our farmers should not be used as a bargaining chip for negotiations.”
The new deal includes some new guardrails on CCC funding, to protect against the possibility it could somehow go to oil producers.
In recent years Congress has frequently failed to complete the 12 annual spending bills that fund government agencies on time, instead resorting to short-term bills that kick the can down the road, or even allowing the government to shut down. There are often fights about what policy provisions will be attached to these stopgap bills, since in some cases they are the only legislative vehicle pending that is guaranteed to pass into law.
That seems to be the case now, since talks on a larger coronavirus relief bill appear moribund, despite pressure on Pelosi from moderate lawmakers to take new action on economic relief.
Werner writes for The Washington Post.