Democrats, Republicans race to strike year-end tax and spending deal
Democrats want to expand a tax credit that aids low-income families. Republicans hope to preserve a set of tax breaks that benefits businesses. And both parties hope to prevent a federal government shutdown.
Put the pieces together and Congress should have the ingredients for an easy, year-end legislative deal. But in a Capitol where nothing has been simple recently and partisan tensions still run high - there’s a growing fear that even the politically achievable is going to be anything but.
The clock is ticking on lawmakers, who find themselves on Thursday in a familiar race to address a slew of fast-approaching fiscal deadlines. Their chief task is to adopt a new spending measure before Dec. 16, otherwise Washington is set to run out of money, bringing federal agencies, programs and services to an undesirable halt.
The debate so far has proved difficult, and it remains unclear whether the two parties can reach a wide-ranging agreement in a matter of weeks. Without that package, known as an omnibus, Congress also may have no other legislative pathway this year to pursue its remaining policy priorities - including Democrats’ and Republicans’ preferred changes to the tax code.
In many ways, the tough slog could foreshadow more brutal fights and late nights on the horizon, with two years of Democratic control of Congress set to come to an end this January, once Republicans take over the House. If lawmakers cannot come to a compromise even when they share some common purpose, are they going to be able to work together in a divided Washington at all?
“You either want to have an omnibus and move forward with everything in it, or you don’t. This is not a game. This is a reality,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (DConn.), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. “This is a reality that has serious consequences for the American people.”
For the moment, senior Democrats and Republicans labored Wednesday to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. The discussions have been stalled for weeks, according to Democrats, who charge that GOP lawmakers have refused to talk specifics, previously citing the now-resolved Georgia Senate runoff election.
Behind the scenes, top Senate appropriators - Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) have been especially active, hoping to clinch one final spending deal before they both retire at the end of the current session of Congress. Democrats said they submitted their latest spending counteroffer to the GOP on Wednesday afternoon. But the two sides have remained at odds over familiar fault lines, with Republicans seeking more money for defense and less for other domestic programs than Democrats and the White House prefer.
“We’re not there yet, but we’re not that far away, either,” Shelby told reporters.
President Biden, however, has encouraged negotiators to “keep working at it,” as Brian Deese, the president’s top economic adviser, put it at a White House news briefing on Tuesday. Biden had lunch with Leahy and Shelby at the White House a day earlier, after meeting with congressional leadership last week.
“Everybody agrees that having a stable, year-long funding bill is better for our country, it’s better for our economy, it’s better for our national security,” Deese said.