House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said today that the lower chamber could vote on a sweeping two-year budget agreement as soon as next week if congressional leaders and the White House can clinch a deal in the coming days.
“I'm hopeful that that can happen,“ the Maryland Democrat told reporters during his weekly pen-and-pad briefing.
Hoyer said he has had positive conversations with both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who have led the negotiations and are expected to continue talking today.
The House is running out of time, with lawmakers set to leave for August recess on July 26. Mnuchin has said the federal government could breach its borrowing authority in early September — before Congress returns from summer break.
But Pelosi on Monday night rejected the notion of a short-term debt limit hike, with both Democrats and many Republicans preferring to hold out for a broader bargain that would lift discretionary spending caps and the debt limit for fiscal years 2020 and 2021.
Hoyer reiterated that Democrats are opposed to a short-term deal to lift the debt ceiling without a broader agreement to avert billions in spending cuts.
“There’s some talk about short-term, we’re opposed to short-term, we don’t want to go through this again,” Hoyer said. “We think it needs to be at least a two-year extension and a two-year caps deal, so we’re not continually going down this crisis road.”
The House Speaker has demanded dollar-for-dollar increases in military and non-military spending, in addition to $22 billion over the next two fiscal years for veterans health care.
That request for billions in funding for veterans health care, in addition to offsets for spending increases, remain hurdles to a deal, Mnuchin and Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said on Monday.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine