Senate appropriators had barely begun work on Tuesday before the process blew up, mired in disagreements over abortion-related “poison pills” and funding for domestic programs and President Donald Trump’s border wall.
The squabbling reinforces the likelihood a stopgap spending bill will be needed through mid-November or early December, which House and Senate leaders are mulling as they face another government shutdown at the Sept.
30 end of the fiscal year.The uproar began after Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) informed colleagues that she would introduce an amendment to the fiscal 2020 funding bill for the Department of Health and Human Services barring the Trump administration from implementing its Title X family planning rule, a Senate GOP aide said.
As a result, Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) abruptly canceled a subcommittee markup for the Labor-HHS-Education measure. Any work on the bill will be postponed until both sides can hash out what constitutes a “poison pill,” the aide said. The full committee is still scheduled to consider the bill on Thursday.
“Title X has always had strong bipartisan support, so I'm unclear why they fear voting on it now,” Murray told POLITICO.
Shelby also said it’s “premature“ to speculate about whether Thursday's full committee markup will be postponed, floating the idea that the bill could advance without the subcommittee's stamp of approval.
"You know, we don't have to have a subcommittee meeting. We could go right to the full committee,” he said.
Appropriators earlier Tuesday had easily approved in subcommittee the $695 billion fiscal 2020 Defense spending bill, which would boost funding for F-35 aircraft.
Senate Democrats are balking at Republicans’ proposed Labor-HHS-Education allocation, which amounts to a 1 percent increase over the fiscal 2019 level of $180 billion, the Senate GOP aide said. They also want to add a provision to the fiscal 2020 funding measure for the State Department that would nix the so-called Mexico City policy, which bars U.S. foreign aid from flowing to groups that promote or provide abortion.
Democrats think the proposed allocation for the Department of Homeland Security, which the GOP aide didn’t disclose, is too high. And they’re objecting to a lack of protections in the Defense bill that would prevent Trump from diverting funds to build a border wall.
“Senate Republicans have decided to begin the appropriations process with a partisan plan to raid taxpayer dollars from health care programs, education, job training and our military to pay for an ineffective border wall that will do nothing to address the humanitarian crisis on our southern border,” a Senate Democratic aide said in a statement.
“They have refused to restrict the president’s ability to steal from funds appropriated for the military and their families. [Senate Appropriations] Vice Chairman Patrick Leahy is hopeful the Committee can get back on track to complete a bipartisan appropriations process.“
The budget deal signed by Trump last month, H.R. 3877 (116), included a handshake agreement that both sides avoid overly partisan policy provisions that could threaten upheaval of the appropriations process. But without any real teeth enforcing that pledge, it’s unclear if both sides will stick to it.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) indicated that Senate Democrats plan to take action on Thursday when the full Senate Appropriations Committee takes up the fiscal 2020 Defense measure, possibly introducing an amendment that would block the Trump administration from any further border wall cash grabs.
“Congress cannot and should not be silent when the power of the purse is undermined in this way,” he said. “Why are we here? Why do we have an Appropriations Committee if this president can ask for money for certain purposes, we appropriate it, and then he ignores us and takes the money for his own political agenda?”
“I am certain my colleagues and I will be ready on Thursday in the full committee to ask … all the members of the Appropriations Committee to stand up for our own constitutional responsibility,” Durbin said.
Alice Miranda Ollstein, Jennifer Scholtes and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine