Congress faces big tests

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to wrap up work on the budget, highway funding and taxes, an end-of-the-year stretch that will test the standing of Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan with the GOP’s tea party wing and its anti-establishment presidential candidates.

There are less than two weeks until a deadline to pass a $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill to fund Cabinet agencies and avoid a holiday season government shutdown. If the process doesn’t go smoothly, a lastminute temporary funding measure would be required to keep the government open when the current stopgap funding measure expires Dec. 11.

The so-called omnibus spending bill represents a challenge for Ryan, R-Wis., who took over the top House job after former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was forced out this fall over his penchant for looking to Democrats to pass major legislation like year-end spending bills, among other reasons.

Ryan is sure to have to do the same this time around despite pressure from outside groups like the Heritage Foundation to force battles over trying to use the must-do measure to take away federal funding from Planned Parenthood or deal with worries about Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks.

But the renegades that ran Boehner out of Washington aren’t in any mood to rough up Ryan just yet.

“I think it’s unfair to hold Paul Ryan accountable for this particular omnibus. The Dec. 11 crisis that our leadership created is one of the reasons we got rid of our leadership,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a tea party favorite.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is rising in the national presidential horserace polls, is another matter altogether. If past is prologue, he’s sure to use debate on the omnibus measure to burnish his reputation for attacking Capitol Hill GOP leaders and build opposition to the catchall spending compromise among Republican voters.

House-Senate negotiations on a long-term measure funding highway and transit programs seem likely to finally produce results, helped in large part by a new “offset” to help pay for the measure that involves a money shuffle from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury. At issue is a House provision to eliminate $29.3 billion in the Federal Reserve’s capital surplus account and prevent the Fed from depositing future profits there.

Budget watchdogs call the money transfer a complete gimmick and say that the additional highway spending it is being used to justify will increase the federal debt by at least $59 billion over the coming 10 years. But free money is a precious commodity in Washington and given the popularity of highway spending — as well as the sweeping 354-72 House vote for the move — the common wisdom is that the dubious offset will stay.