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 U.S. lawmakers expected that a promising budget deal reached after
a government shutdown last year would herald a new normal for
passing annual spending bills, moving Congress away from the
crisis-driven approach and resulting economic jitters of recent
years.
But the spending bills have been derailed in the Senate by
election-year politics and a war over Republican amendments that
range from thwarting curbs on power-plant carbon emissions to
restoring potatoes to a government nutrition assistance program.
With a new fiscal year looming on Oct. 1, a stopgap funding measure
of the type that has kept the federal government afloat in fits and
starts for five years looks increasingly likely, along with the risk
of another government shutdown.
Congress starts a five-week recess on Aug. 1 and has about 10 work
days in September before lawmakers break for a month of campaigning
for November congressional elections.
"Prospects don't look good at the moment" for the 12 spending bills,
said Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate
Appropriations Committee. "This is an election year and this is
tough politics."
Nothing has illustrated that sentiment more vividly than the brawl
over an amendment fighting new Environmental Protection Agency rules
to curb power plant carbon emissions that Senate Republican leader
Mitch McConnell tried to attach to a package of three spending
bills.
McConnell, locked in a heated re-election fight in coal-rich
Kentucky, argued that a simple majority for amendments should apply
to appropriations bills, rather than the 60-vote threshold he has
insisted on in the past.
As the pro-coal amendment was likely to draw significant support
from Democrats also facing re-election battles, Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid refused to budge on the 60-vote threshold and
pulled the three bills from the floor in June.
The two sides remain deadlocked.
Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in
New Jersey, called the dispute election-season "trench warfare,"
with Reid moving to protect his vulnerable majority from votes that
might cost Democrats seats in November.
Lawmakers had seen a strong chance of properly executing their
constitutional spending powers this year because the post-shutdown
budget deal had set top-line spending levels for discretionary
programs for two years, eliminating a major source of division. All
they had to do was divide up the money.
Now some on Capitol Hill are wondering what lawmakers' work will
come to this year if that opportunity is squandered. Allocating
taxpayers' money makes up a significant part of Congress's work:
about a third of the House of Representatives' roll call votes so
far this year, 115 out of 378.
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GETTING NOWHERE
"It seems to me we spent all week doing, so much of the time,
nothing," Reid said during an appropriations debate last month.
"Sadly, I am sorry this is the norm around here."
Things are somewhat better in the Republican-controlled House, where
six of 12 spending bills have passed. But the latest, a $34 billion
energy and water programs bill approved on Thursday, drew a veto
threat from the White House because it included provisions to block
some new environmental regulations.
The last time Congress succeeded in passing all 12 bills on time was
in 1996. In almost 40 years, lawmakers accomplished the task just
four times.
Greater political polarization has increased Congress's reliance on
stopgap measures to fund the government, political science professor
Sarah Anderson found in a 2012 study at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
Anderson said spending bill delays are even longer when one party is
split. With the rift between mainstream Republicans and the
conservative Tea Party wing, the situation now is "probably pretty
close to as bad as it gets," she said.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, a
Democrat, is refusing to give up on the spending bills. She insists
she has not started work on a continuing resolution, or CR, to
extend funding past Sept. 30.
A CR would rely on the previous year's funding levels until
lawmakers hammer out a final bill. This places a burden on federal
agencies, making it impossible for them to carry out some basic
functions such as hiring because of budget uncertainty.
Mikulski did not rule out an "omnibus" spending bill that combines
individual appropriations bills and acknowledged that amendments are
threatening to derail the process.
"For anybody that has other amendments, leave us alone. Let us get
our bills done," she implored in a committee hearing on Thursday.
The same politics driving those legislative embellishments - looking
good in an election year - may help avoid a government shutdown a
month before voters go to the polls.
"I think both parties would ultimately vote for a CR," said Shelby,
who is from Alabama. "Nobody wants to shut the government down."
(Editing by Doina Chiacu and Mohammad Zargham)
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