Last-minute negotiations over the weekend held up the release of a stopgap spending and disaster aid bill on Sunday, sending Congress’ year-end work into a tailspin — for now.
Leaders are expected to release the continuing resolution and disaster funding supplemental Monday — one day later than anticipated after discussions over farm funding heated up while negotiations over permitting reform appeared to hit a dead end.
The new timeline would set up a House vote on the package around mid-week at the earliest and pin the slow-moving Senate against Friday night’s shutdown deadline.
The disaster aid portion has broad bipartisan support and appears to be on track to survive the eleventh-hour negotiations, but congressional leaders have offered few details about what the rest of the bill will look like. Any controversial provisions could threaten to further delay passage.
House leaders indicated last week that they intended to try to advance the legislation through the Rules Committee, which would allow the bill to pass on the floor with a simple majority vote rather than the two-thirds vote required under fast-track procedures.
Despite some resistance on the Rules panel from hard-line conservatives who typically don’t vote for continuing resolutions, it may be leadership’s only option if lawmakers are unable to strike a deal on the farm aid and conservation funding.
Farm groups and farm-district Republicans made demands over the weekend for the badly needed money to be included, and some of those GOP lawmakers suggested they would vote against any proposal that did not include the money.
The standoff sparked when an agreement envisioned by Agriculture Committee leaders on both sides of the aisle appeared to fall apart.
House Democratic staff members said House Republican leaders opposed including as much as $14.5 billion in conservation money from Democrats’ 2022 climate law, and Democrats reportedly balked at the inclusion of farm aid without that conservation money.
“The failure to include economic assistance will have devastating and lasting consequences on our farm families, the rural communities in which they live and American agriculture. For that reason, we intend to oppose any supplemental spending package that does not provide meaningful assistance to our farmers,” said a joint statement from House Agriculture Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) and his Senate Agriculture ranking member John Boozman (R-Ark.).
On Saturday, the conservative-leaning American Farm Bureau Federation expressed disappointment that “Congress appears to [be turning] a blind eye to the agricultural recession” and called on farm-district lawmakers to oppose the spending bill if it does not include economic aid for farmers.
“It’s just plain unacceptable that our elected leaders are considering putting politics first,” Zippy Duvall, the group’s president, said in a statement. “I hope reasonable members of Congress take a stand for the good folks who stock their pantries.”
On Sunday, the National Association of Conservation Districts called for congressional leaders to include both the farm aid and the conservation funding.
Permitting, disaster aid
A bipartisan effort to attach permitting language to the CR faltered over the weekend, even as negotiators insisted that talks were ongoing.
As lawmakers huddled last week and on Saturday, making progress on a deal to bolster the electric grid and ease the approval process for all types of energy projects, time appeared to run out.
Retiring Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.), House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and others have been working for weeks to try to find compromise on making changes to the National Environmental Policy Act.
Success would not only require a bipartisan accord on NEPA, grid development measures and other matters, but also approval of all leaders and the White House and a guarantee it wouldn’t jeopardize the broader spending plan.
Two people familiar with the discussion said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) ultimately pulled the plug. A spokesperson for Johnson did not provide a comment.
Separately, negotiations over the massive disaster relief supplemental appeared to be going smoothly last week, and appropriators said they expected it to make it into the package without any major reductions or hang-ups.
Some Republicans has said the White House’s $115 billion request would be whittled down to about $30 billion or 40 billion, but by the end of the week, members on both sides of the aisle were expressing confidence that the final product would include somewhere between $80 billion and $100 billion.
The White House had asked Congress to approve $40 billion for FEMA’s almost depleted disaster relief fund, $24 billion for disaster programs at the Department of Agriculture, $12 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s community development disaster block grants and tens of billions of dollars for other programs.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), ranking member on the Senate Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee, both said they expected the CR to also include a short-term extension of the National Flood Insurance Program.
On Sunday, amid growing concern about drone sightings across parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), co-chairs of the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus, sent a letter to Johnson asking him to include bipartisan counter-drone and drone-detection legislation in the CR.
Reporters Marc Heller, Kelsey Brugger and Emma Dumain contributed.
