Environment, refugees hold up talks on budget

“They sent us an offer that was anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-education, anti-environment… anti-refugee”, said top House Appropriations Committee Democrat Nita Lowey of NY.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said this week that Republicans had initially included more than 250 riders that Democrats had whittled down to about 100 now under debate. Ryan cited success in passing the anti-Syrian refugee bill a few weeks ago and Thursday’s vote on the five-year highway bill.

“Even if [the President] won’t sign them into law, we will put out specific proposals and give the people a real choice”, Ryan will say.

Republicans are driving toward Senate approval legislation that aims to demolish President Barack Obama’s health care law and halt Planned Parenthood’s federal money.

“My response was the response that the appropriators put together”, Pelosi said, referring to the Democrats’ counteroffer, which was delivered to GOP leaders Wednesday night. This is similar to what they did on refugees.

Democrats immediately said no, and reminded Ryan that they told him that the bill needed to be done by November 20.

“We need to control the presidency”, he said. Sure, many lawmakers may be afraid to take a tough vote that will give Democrats ammunition to attack them, but the bigger reason Republicans haven’t acted on a replacement for Obamacare is that 218 of them can’t agree on what it would look like.

Ryan wants to avoid the perception that he is cooking up some background compromise with Pelosi – something conservatives decried when former Speaker John Boehner turned to Democrats to avoid potential crises.

“You are in a much stronger bargaining position when you have some bipartisan buy-in”, said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Whether it’s Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or someone else, the party standard-bearer will have a lot to say about how aggressive Republicans in Congress are as the election approaches. For one, he plans to mention the need for another round of welfare reform to follow up on the changes made by the Republican Congress in concert with President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s: “That was just one program”.

They’re running out of time. But he also warned that any one of those riders could cause the bill to fail.