Congress was at an impasse on Wednesday, Nov. 11, one month before the Dec. 11 deadline to fund the federal government, with Democrats urging a short-term spending bill and Republicans unwilling to waste their last chance to pass their priorities, the Washington Post reported.
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on Nov. 9 that she wants a continuing resolution that runs into January, when Democrats take control, according to EY's weekly Washington note, which was published on Nov. 11.
The Iran question
The sharper dispute this month runs inside the Democratic Party, over whether a stopgap bill should bar money for the war with Iran. Progressives, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Ro Khanna, want a stopgap that bars funding for Iran military operations, and they have met resistance from senior Democrats, the Washington Sun reported on Nov. 11.
Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, put the question this way in that Nov. 11 report: "I want the war to end. Would shutting down the government make that more likely, or would it just hand the Republicans a political victory while the war continues?"
Smith also said that President Trump has financed the war using existing Pentagon funding, without a specific appropriation, according to the Washington Sun.
Sen. Chris Coons was more direct in the same report: "I do not think we should have a government shutdown."
Murray drew her line at the war money itself. "We are not going to accept their supplemental funding that funds the war," she said, according to the Washington Sun. Murray and Rep. Rosa DeLauro both favor a short-term extension, and DeLauro said there is not enough time to finish the defense spending bill before the end of the year, the newspaper reported on Nov. 11.
What else is on the lame-duck list
The funding bill is not the only item before the outgoing Congress. The Senate has cleared two procedural votes on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, an energy-permitting bill that would also require data centers to pay for their associated transmission costs, EY reported on Nov. 11. Its sponsors are Sens. Capito, Lee, Heinrich and Whitehouse, according to EY.
EY's Nov. 11 note also described speculation in Washington about a Republican reconciliation bill and about a bipartisan tax package that could be attached to the funding bill.
The next Congress
The incoming majorities frame the bargaining now under way. As of Nov. 11, EY's tally of the next House stood at 256 Democrats and 168 Republicans, with some races still uncalled. Its count of the next Senate stood at 54 Democrats and 44 Republicans, with the races in Mississippi and Alaska uncalled. Those are EY's current tallies, and they can change as the remaining races are called.
Those numbers sit behind the positions the Post described on Nov. 11. A stopgap that runs into January, as Murray proposed on Nov. 9, would leave the next round of spending decisions to a Congress that Democrats will control, while Republicans have until Dec. 11 to settle what they can before that happens.