The Senate cleared a three-bill spending package Thursday for President Donald Trump’s signature, completing a fraction of government funding measures necessary to avert another shutdown ahead of the month-end deadline.
Lawmakers voted 82-15 to approve legislation funding the departments of Justice, Interior, Commerce and Energy, as well as the EPA, water programs and federal science initiatives through the end of the current fiscal year.
Another spending package, funding the departments of Treasury and State, will be waiting for senators when they return from their recess next week. The House passed that measure Wednesday.
Together, they represent significant progress after last year’s record-breaking funding lapse. But the vast majority of government programs still need to be funded if Congress wants to avoid another stopgap to keep federal operations afloat beyond Jan. 30. That includes more than 75 percent of discretionary funding, including for the Pentagon and many of the largest non-defense programs.
“We’ve got to continue to complete the job and make progress on the remainder of the appropriations bills,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) on the floor Thursday afternoon.
“Our goal is to get all of these bills signed into law, no continuing resolutions that lock in previous priorities and don’t reflect today’s realities,” she added. “No more disastrous government shutdowns that are totally unnecessary and so harmful.”
The next two weeks will be a gauntlet for both chambers as the thorniest bills are still in the throes of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations.
Lawmakers are optimistic that the text of another spending package funding Defense, Transportation-HUD and Labor-HHS-Education could be released in the middle of the upcoming long weekend. The Homeland Security funding package, however, remains in limbo,complicated by ongoing tensions in Minnesota where ICE agents have in recent days shot at least two people — one fatally.
“We know that they’re working, and we’re hoping they make some magic out of it,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said in an interview about appropriators who are in the throes of negotiating the DHS bill.
The latest offer House Republicans sent to the Senate on the DHS bill would order the department to fund body cameras for immigration enforcement agents. But Democrats are hold more restrictions on the agency.
“There’s no budget like DHS. The way that they move money, the way that they’ve moved personnel, has no precedent,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the Democrat leading DHS funding negotiations in the Senate, said in a brief interview Thursday afternoon.
“We need to have restraints that actually make a difference,” Murphy added.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted Thursday that if any of the dozen annual funding bills would be “a candidate” for short-term funding, “it would be that one.”
The protracted runway to finish this work is compounded by the fact that the Senate is planning to be in recess next week, with the House set to be gone the week after for a district work period.
The House itself is also struggling to function under the razor-thin GOP majority, where Speaker Mike Johnson spent the past several days contending with dire attendance issues and intraparty revolts — including over earmarks.
Fiscal hawks including Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy call earmarks “the currency of corruption” and have taken aim at specific funding lawmakers have secured for projects in their districts.
The “minibus” funding package the Senate passed Thursday, meanwhile, prevailed over hard-liner attempts to severely shrink spending. It largely rejects the dramatic cuts the White House requested and instead makes more restrained spending reductions to energy and environment programs.
The National Park Service would face a moderate reduction from current funding levels — much less than the 37 percent cut the White House sought. The EPA would see a 4 percent reduction of $320 million, instead of the more than $4 billion President Donald Trump proposed to slash.
One area set to get a boost is trade agencies, with an 18 percent increase for the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office and a 23 percent increase for the Commerce Department office responsible for designing and enforcing export controls used to target China and other countries.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
