Sides gird for battle over federal budget

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has warned Congress that he will never sign another foot-tall, $1 trillion-plus government-wide spending bill like the one he did in March. His message to lawmakers in both par

ties: Get your act together before the next budget lands on my desk.

After a brief government shutdown earlier this year, Democrats and Republicans now agree on the need for budgeting day-today operations of govern

ment by the old-fashioned way. That means weeks of open debate and amendments that empower rankand-file lawmakers, rather

than concentrating power in the hands of a few leaders meeting in secret. But Capitol Hill’s dysfunc

tion is so pervasive that even the most optimistic predictions are for only a handful of the 12 annual spending bills to make it into law by Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year. The rest may get bundled together into

a single, massive measure yet again.

The worst-case scenario? A

government shutdown just a month before Election Day, Nov. 6, as Republicans and

Democrats fight for control of the House and possibly the Senate. Trump is agitat

ing for more money for his long-promised border wall with Mexico. So far, he has been frustrated by limited success on that front.

“We need the wall. We’re going to have it all. And again, that wall has started. We got $1.6 billion. We come up again (in) September,” Trump said in a campaign-style event in Michigan last month. “If we don’t get border security, we’ll have no choice. We’ll close down the country because we need border security.”

At stake is the funding for daily operations of govern

ment agencies. A budget deal this year reversed spending cuts that affected military readiness and put a crimp on domestic agencies. A $1.3 trillion spending bill swept through Congress in March, though Trump entertained last-minute second thoughts about the measure and promised he would not sign a repeat.

The demise of the annual appropriations process took root after Republicans took over the House in 2011 and is part of a broader breakdown on Capitol Hill. The yearly bills need bipartisan support to advance, which has grated on tea party law

makers. GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and his predecessor as speaker, Ohio Republican

John Boehner, have preferred to focus on other priorities.

Ryan did throw his weight behind a two-year budget agreement this year that set an overall spending limit of $1.3 trillion for both 2018 and 2019, citing a need to boost the Pentagon.

That, in theory, makes it

easier to get the appropriations process back on track. But in the GOP-controlled House, where Democratic votes are generally needed to pass the bills, Democrats

are complaining that Republicans have shortchanged domestic agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s not the case in the Senate, where the new chair

man of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, is determined to get the system working again.