Budget Negotiations Down to the Wire in Congress

The House passed the legislation in a voice vote Friday, which will keep current spending levels in place while lawmakers continue to hash out a deal. President Obama is expected to sign the measure before the midnight deadline.

The House of Representatives passed a bill that had already obtained the approval of the Senate and which extends until next Wednesday the time available for lawmakers to pass a $1.1 trillion spending plan.

Republicans are seeking to lift the oil export ban and various financial and environmental regulations, and also want to address security concerns about Syrian refugees, while Democrats want to protect administration environmental and labor rules.

Lawmakers voted in September to set December 11 as the deadline for passing a spending bill when they were unable to do it by the start of the 2016 fiscal year on October 1. With agency money running out Saturday, the Senate approved legislation financing government through next Wednesday to give negotiators time to craft a final deal.

Ryan justified extending the deadline and deliberately distanced himself from the massive spending package, saying Thursday, “this is something I more or less inherited from the last regime, and I don’t want to rush things through here”.

“We need to get these countries to meet minimum standards on trafficking, certainly well before we enter into a trade and investment relationship with them”, Levin said.

Yet though Republicans dominate Congress, the aversion of many GOP lawmakers to spending bills meant Democratic votes would be needed to pass the sweeping $1.1 trillion package.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said he doesn’t expect first votes on the bill until Tuesday night. “I am optimistic that we will be able to find a bipartisan budget agreement if Republicans abandon that effort”, spokesman Josh Earnest said. The final areas of contention are the so-called “riders”, the policy issues that lawmakers like to add to must-do bills. But House members say they hope to have the full text of the bill posted by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said negotiators were down to about 40 riders after starting with 202.

For instance, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said she would “insist” the bill include a provision lifting a ban on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research of gun violence, something many Republicans oppose.

If Congress can not pass the funding bill by Wednesday, it will either have to approve another stop-gap funding measure or risk pushing Washington into its second shutdown since 2013.

With little more than a year left in office and facing a frequently hostile GOP-led Congress, Obama was hoping an agreement would burnish his legacy by making permanent some expiring tax cuts for millions of families with lower-to middle incomes, younger children and college students.

“Let’s try to take this opportunity to say: ‘You want to pass a bill that has all of your priorities in it?”