Via John Bresnahan and Samantha Handler at Punchbowl News:
Top House and Senate appropriators remain deadlocked over fiscal year 2025 spending, unable to reach agreement on a topline figure for the 12 annual bills, even as the threat of a government shutdown grows. The chief sticking point remains Democrats’ demand for language binding President Donald Trump to spend funds as appropriated by Congress, according to sources in both parties. Republicans refuse to give in on that point, saying they won’t do anything to limit Trump’s options. Federal agencies will run out of money after March 14. . . . Sources in both parties say the two sides aren’t that far apart on money, but they remain deeply divided over impoundment and Trump’s ability to redirect — or refuse to spend — congressionally approved funding that has been signed into law.
Bresnahan and Handler add that “GOP efforts to push through massive reconciliation bills in order to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts have also angered Democrats,” which is ironic given how Democrats tried to use the reconciliation process to ram through the $2 trillion Build Back Better Act in 2021 and succeeded at using it to pass the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
The ins and outs of the reconciliation process (the means by which tax and spending bills can evade the filibuster to pass without 60 votes in the Senate) are part of the problem here. If they can keep their slim caucuses united, Republicans have the votes to pass without Democratic support anything that is properly channeled through reconciliation. But there are particular and abstruse rules governing that process; it’s supposed to be used once a year to set the budget.
If Republicans can reach a budget they all agree on, Trump should be willing to give ground on impoundment authority, because such a budget can be written so that it accomplished what impoundment is supposed to be aimed at: spending money only on the things that either Congress explicitly authorizes or the president approves. But there are two major problems. First, Trump’s real goals extend to other things as well, such as reshaping programs previously authorized by Congress or bending agency staff to his will. The latter of those ought to be easier within the executive power; the former involves improperly sapping the power of Congress. Second, getting the budget just right is a lot of work, and it will take a lot of time, and it’s far from clear that the current House and Senate Republican caucuses can stay united enough to agree on it. This whole process is including the Democrats because Republicans can’t get all of that done through the proper budget channels in time to fund the government by mid-March. Which is yet another example of why there’s no long-term substitute for restoring regular budget order and relearning how to use it — or better still, someday reforming how the process works altogether.