The government funding process is broken. The legislative relationship between Republicans and Democrats in Congress is near an all-time low. And the rescission bill has only made it worse.
“I just can’t imagine that we’re going to get an appropriations package done,” Sen. Thom Tillis said regarding the Sept. 30 deadline for government funding. “It’s probably going to have to be maybe an omni or something year-end. But sadly for Susan Collins, who’s really had a great record of trying to do that, I just don’t think it’s in the cards.”
The government appropriations process has been filled with problems for years. Congress hasn’t passed all 12 appropriations bills since 1997. Funding is instead deployed almost exclusively through stopgap bills or huge deals, almost always passed at the last minute — sometimes after the last minute, when a shutdown has already taken place.
This fall, when government funding is set to expire, it will be a similar story. At least, lawmakers are hoping for a similar story.
The truth is, this time could be much worse.
For one, Senate Democrats have little incentive to go along with spending bills exclusively written by Republicans. (Bipartisan spending negotiations are more tainted than ever, and the drafting process for bills isn’t much different.)
In March, Republicans were able to get Senate Democrats to go along with a funding bill that largely extended current operations but also made some changes. That decision led to significant backlash for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose vote to fund the government led to some Democrats calling for him to step down.
Schumer and other Democrats could be less likely to accept the Republican plan this time, particularly as the GOP tries to codify cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency. With a 60-vote threshold for government funding, Democrats have a say on whether any spending bill passes. And given the repercussions last time, as well as the appropriations process this time, most staff in Congress feel Democrats won’t give in so easily.
Making matters worse is the rescission bill. Democrats say the GOP efforts to roll back government funding that was previously approved by Congress has only further soiled the appropriations process.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic member of the Appropriations Committee, was clear that the rescission bill would “undermine our confidence in the appropriations process, because it is literally going back on an agreement that was reached.”
“I mean, there are ways for presidents to propose rescissions that are dealt with in a bipartisan way, but that’s not this,” Van Hollen said. “It will undermine our trust in the system, because Republicans can vote for one thing one day and then collude with President Trump to take it out the next.”
Rescissions themselves are not inherently partisan, though this package is falling that way. Like reconciliation, rescission requests are only subject to a simple-majority threshold in the Senate, meaning they require little to no support from the minority party for passage.
So while government funding requires bipartisan support for passage, reneging that funding does not.
“You negate the appropriations process,” Sen. Gary Peters, another Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told NOTUS. “To just have all that thrown out with a rescission afterwards, it kind of asks the question, ‘Why do we even have an appropriations process if the Republicans just want to be a rubber stamp to whatever Donald Trump wants?’”
Some Republicans appear to have bore that conflict in mind when voting on whether or not to advance the rescission package this week.
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Appropriations Committee, voted against advancing the bill to the Senate floor. She said in a statement that she had not been given enough details from the Office of Management and Budget about which programs would be cut by the bill.
“The rescissions package has a big problem: Nobody really knows what program reductions are in it,” Collins said. “That isn’t because we haven’t had time to review the bill. Instead, the problem is that OMB has never provided the details that would normally be part of this process.”
In a closed-door meeting with Republicans, Collins pointed to how a 1992 rescission bill was written, with line items showing which programs would receive cuts. The rescission bill Trump sent to Capitol Hill simply had dollar amounts from different legislation, making it anyone’s guess on what actually was being cut.
Republicans actually had to pass the bill before finding out what’s actually in it — and that didn’t work for Collins.
But more than just the substance of the legislation, there is also the politics of the matter. With Democrats so resistant to the bill, Collins seemed to know that approving the legislation would only make passing appropriations measures tougher.
It’s something one of Collins’ closest allies, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, explicitly called out to reporters to explain why she was opposed to the rescission legislation.
“I’ve got concerns about the details that we have not been able to fully receive,” Murkowski said of the bill. “But more important than all of that, more important is our role here. I don’t want us to go from one reconciliation bill to a rescissions package to another rescissions package to a reconciliation package to a continuing resolution.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell, another appropriator who is close with Collins and Murkowski, also voted against advancing the package (though he eventually voted in support of it). It’s a sight that would have seemed sacreligious in previous terms, when McConnell sat atop the Senate GOP conference. But since leaving leadership, he’s been more comfortable voting his conscience.
In explaining his vote against advancing the bill to reporters, McConnell blamed OMB and the lack of information about the cuts for his vote — “They won’t tell us how they’re going to apply the cuts” — but the effect on the institution of the Senate may not have been far from his mind.
As Senate majority leader, McConnell repeatedly used Democrats breaking upper chamber norms when they were in the majority to justify his own departures from precedent when Republicans took control — either to jam Trump’s first-term nominees through, muscle through Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination, or to just lower how long it took to debate judicial nominees.
Republicans undoing congressionally approved spending through rescissions just makes it more likely that Democrats do the same later. And it makes both parties less likely to trust each other on appropriations.
As it stands, that’s exactly what the rescission bill seems to have done.
Still, some Republicans think Democrats may be bluffing, or that they were never going to support a government funding deal this fall in the first place.
“They’re looking for a reason to vote ‘no,’ it doesn’t make any difference,” Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin said of Democratic threats about rescission repercussions.
“They have to,” Mullin continued. “That’s where their base is. Their base didn’t want them to agree to anything. That’s why they filibustered all but one of our nominees.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday that he’s still aiming to put at least some appropriations bills on the floor.
“My intent is, if the committee will succeed in getting some of those bills reported out, that we would put some of them together, hopefully, and get a bill on the floor for consideration,” Thune said, adding that he hopes to have “Democrat support to try and move the appropriations process in a way that it hasn’t now for the past several years here in the Senate.”
But there’s hardly any time for that, particularly if Democrats are going to filibuster the bills. Plus, there’s no real discussion of passing all 12 appropriations bills through regular order. The legislative days don’t exist between now and Sept. 30.
Schumer has sounded skeptical that the process will go smoothly. For weeks he’s been bashing the GOP’s partisan rollback of previous appropriations. And given the heat he took earlier this term, there are sincere doubts about how eager he’ll be to play nice this time around.
That’s not to say Schumer couldn’t vote against a bill while other Democrats voted for it. There’s always that possibility, particularly after the heat Schumer personally took last time.
But, typically, the leader’s vote is aligned with at least a sizable faction of their caucus. At least seven Senate Democrats need to vote with Republicans to fund the government, assuming unanimous Republican support.
In March, there were 10 Democrats who voted to avert a shutdown: Schumer, Peters, Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Kirsten Gillibrand, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, Brian Schatz and Jeanne Shaheen.
Still, Schumer stresses he’s eager to work with Republicans on a bipartisan appropriations process — if Republicans just would.
When asked at a press conference on Tuesday whether an appropriations deal is at risk over the rescission bill, Schumer had a pointed reply: “Ask the Republicans that question.”
“We are doing everything we can — everything we can — to keep the bipartisan appropriations process going forward,” he said. “It’s what every president has done — Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative — and it serves the country well because people are represented and don’t get hurt.”
“When one side tries to do it all,” Schumer added, “it creates big problems.”
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Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with additional reporting.