Senate drama over federal spending came to a head on Thursday as conservatives frustrated leadership’s attempts to advance a minibus.
The chamber cleared its first procedural hurdle on Tuesday to consider a bill that would wrap three spending measures into one, a move meant to speed up the appropriations process, but lawmakers left Washington just two days later no closer to a resolution.
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Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, attempted to move the legislation forward but was blocked by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is demanding that the Senate take up each bill one by one.
"I'm pushing for functionality to be returned to this chamber," he told the Washington Examiner. "What's wrong with taking up just one bill? Pass it, move on to the next."
Washington only has two weeks until a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government, and neither chamber is even close. Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) efforts to pass a Pentagon funding bill fell apart this week despite pleas to his conference that their leverage would be weakened in negotiations with the Senate if the government shuts down.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the ranking Republican on Appropriations, warned that's where the country is headed if Johnson does not drop his hold. That, or the sort of all-encompassing spending bills that conservatives hate.
"The fact is, we’ll take plenty of time on the three bills, and we’re going to have a robust amendment process, so what difference does it make?" Collins said. "We don't have time to take each bill individually to the floor — we're going to end up with an omnibus, a government shutdown, or a yearlong continuing resolution."
Johnson is not the only Republican objecting to the minibus. Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) has placed a hold for the same reason, though he cautioned he doesn't want to cause a shutdown over it.
"A minibus is a version of an omnibus, and it's all part of the system here that breaches what we should be doing," he said.
Not all conservatives are in Johnson's camp, even as many have placed holds on the minibus for other reasons. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), for example, will object unless he gets a standalone vote on a disaster relief bill he introduced the other week.
Meanwhile, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) plans to withhold his consent until he gets a vote on the Credit Card Competition Act. He says leadership committed to giving him a vote sometime this Congress after he failed to get one as the Senate considered its annual defense bill.
"I mean, there's two schools of thought — one school of thought is you negotiate for an open amendment process. The other school of thought says we should really be doing one bill at a time," said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), one of a handful of fiscal hawks in the Senate.
The demand for individual spending bills is not unusual. Senate conservatives have been calling for regular order for years. Collins, in conjunction with Murray, got all 12 spending bills through their committee before the August recess, the first time appropriators have done so in five years. But Paul worries that bundling those bills will weaken the leverage conservatives have should the Senate go to conference to work out compromise legislation.
He's placed a hold on the minibus and counts himself among those who want to see the bill split up, but he plans to drop his opposition should he get an amendment vote.
It appears he will get one — Murray announced 10 amendments from the Senate floor on Thursday, one of which was Paul's measure to cut spending to the House's target levels.
But leadership has its work cut out for them, as many more eye votes of their own. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) says he'll object if he doesn't get one, while multiple others left the door open to doing so.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) told the Washington Examiner he had not yet decided if he would object, while Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) simply remarked, "Never say never."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), formerly the Senate majority whip, says Schumer has brought the headache upon himself, bringing up a bill with only weeks before a shutdown deadline, and he stood with conservatives looking to break up the minibus.
"Sometimes when you reach an impasse around here, the most important thing you can do is actually get started instead of just sitting around staring at each other," he said.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), a member of Appropriations, doubted Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-NY) would allow the minibus to be split. Schumer himself declined to answer if he would but railed on the conservative holdouts.
"You have a small little group here in the Senate trying to mimic the Freedom Caucus in the House and trying to even slow up a usually bipartisan appropriations bill," he told the Washington Examiner. "What the Republican leadership needs to do is embrace bipartisanship, tell the MAGA Right to take a hike, and we can get things done for the country."
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, acknowledged the long path ahead when asked if they had made progress on the minibus, which would combine three appropriations bills — agriculture, transportation and housing, and military construction and Veterans Affairs.
"Well, it depends how you define progress," he quipped. "I think we kinda know better where we are."
In terms of splitting the package: "We'll see. The options are being explored."
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 3 Republican, told the Washington Examiner he felt no frustration with the conservative holdouts, expressing that he is open to any path that gets all 12 appropriations bills through the chamber.
But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), a member of leadership who also sits on Appropriations, lamented their tactics. She noted the bills had been out there for weeks for senators to review and alluded to their strong bipartisan support.
"I think some people just want to disrupt, and they're probably reflecting what's going on in the House and don't want to appear to be the ones to be moving the process," she said.
Getting all bills through the Senate, even with talk of a continuing resolution to buy lawmakers more time, was going to be a tall order no matter what.
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Collins is critical of Schumer for waiting to bring the bills to the floor. But she saved most of her frustration for the conservatives grinding the appropriations process to a halt.
"I'm dismayed that we've lost another week. I wish that Sen. Schumer had started last week on this bill, but now, we've lost two weeks on the bill, and we are exploring what can be done next," she said.