Congress returned to work this week from a two-week recess, allowing itself only days to address policy and funding level issues that have remained unresolved nearly five months into the current fiscal year.
Temporary spending authority expires Friday (March 1) for agencies funded under the Agriculture, Energy, HUD-Transportation and VA-military construction appropriations bills—which also cover FDA, CFTC, Farm Credit Administration, Army Corps of Engineers and numerous related small agencies and commissions. A second deadline of March 8 applies to other agencies.
During the recess, progress apparently was made toward crafting a regular appropriations bill wrapping together the four appropriations bills with the first deadline, providing funding for those agencies through the end of the fiscal year September 30.
President Biden convened a meeting of bipartisan leaders of both the House and Senate on Tuesday at the White House, producing a somewhat optimistic tone that shutdowns could be avoided. However, no specific measure has been unveiled, requiring a fine threading of the needle in only a matter of several days: the earliest the House could vote on such a measure apparently would be Thursday, with a Senate vote likely not until Friday.
Even more work lies ahead for the eight other appropriations bills, with some expectations that another temporary extension of possibly several more weeks would be needed past the March 8 expiration of temporary funding for them, until a similar wrapup measure covering them could be brought to voting.
As has been the case all along, questions remain whether any measure or measures could attract enough votes in the House to pass with only Republican support, as GOP leaders prefer. That would have to include a group of about three dozen of the farthest-right members whose insistence on certain spending and policy provisions has caused Republican leaders to turn to Democrats for enacting the three temporary funding measures so far.
However, Democrats in turn have said they will not support those types of provisions, which the House GOP leaders have dropped from the temporary measures to date.
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