Government Executive - Authors - Michael Catalini

Senate Likely to Pass Bill Keeping Government Open

Billy House, Michael Catalini, and Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 10:07:00 -0400

It's the Senate's turn now to vote on keeping the government open and authorizing the White House's request to train moderate Syrian rebels. But the measure, though expected to pass smoothly, is merely the beginning of a much tougher conversation that will wait until after Election Day.

The House approved a stopgap spending bill Wednesday on a bipartisan 319-108 vote, after a 273-156 tally in favor of adding the language on Syria. A Senate vote is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, as members chafe to return to their states to campaign ahead of the midterm elections.

A broader debate over whether to hand President Obama authorization to use military force in Iraq and Syria is likely to come in December. Wednesday's action in the House, where 85 Democrats—more than 40 percent of the caucus—and 71 Republicans opposed the narrower authorization to arm and train rebels, suggests the next fight could be more difficult for the White House.

Although House members were able to vote separately on the continuing resolution to keep the government's doors open and the Syria authorization, they sent the two measures to the Senate as a single package, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat, said Wednesday that the Senate is very likely to deal with both issues in a single vote.

Overall, if approved by the Senate, the bill would keep money flowing to federal agencies after the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, through Dec. 11, at the current annualized spending level of $1.012 trillion. The stopgap measure is needed because the House and Senate have not agreed on any of the 12 annual spending bills for fiscal 2015.

Senators and aides expect the package to pass with majorities on both sides, but the question of arming and vetting Syrian rebels has produced some discomfort for both Democrats and Republicans. Liberals are questioning the potential for escalation in the use of force in Syria, while conservatives object to the president's overall strategy.

In order to attract both groups, the Syria authorization was very deliberately and very tightly knit together to give the president the authority he desires, while, for the time being, ruling out a ground war and putting a strict time limit on that authority. The authorization, like the continuing resolution, will expire on Dec. 11.

That feature in particular won the support of Republican leadership.

"I particularly like the fact that the Syria authorizing legislation sunsets with the expiration of the CR or the passage of the defense authorization bill," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. "What's good about that is even though—again, speaking for myself—I support what the president's doing, I'd like to take another look at it a couple of months from now and see how it's working out."

Senior lawmakers are predicting that a war authorization will emerge as an important issue, likely when Congress moves to approve a bill authorizing the defense budget for 2015.

"This issue will be taken up in the NDAA," said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan. Levin suggested that the language in the House package could simply be extended, or that lawmakers may include an authorization for the use of military force, which could involve airstrikes.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez said last week that his committee would begin drafting an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, one that, members on both sides say, is likely to be a major source of contention during the lame duck.

Senate Democrats who had opposed the authorization for the use of force in Iraq as House members are wary of voting to OK a military incursion in Syria. Nonetheless, they say they'll back the continuing resolution that includes the authorization to train Syrian rebels.

"I think it is very important that Congress take up an authorization for the use of military force," said Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. "What we're doing in the CR is clearly not for the authorization of the use of force. It says that specifically."

Although there is widespread support for considering an AUMF, passage looks to be another story.

Already, on just the authorization to arm and train Syrian rebels, Senate leaders have lost a handful of votes on both sides, over concerns about the U.S.'s ability to vet Syrian opposition fighters and the potential scope of the nation's involvement in yet another Middle Eastern conflict. They include conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Republicans Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, who are working to brand themselves on foreign policy ahead of potential White House campaigns. (By contrast, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, another potential 2016 candidate, says he's a likely yea).

On the House side, Wednesday's votes followed an afternoon of intense floor debate. The president's Syria proposal was described alternately as either a limited use of military assistance to vet, arm, and train moderate Syrian rebels to combat a barbaric force—or an ill-planned strategy that threatens to plunge the U.S. deep into a sectarian war.

"This is an amendment and a debate to start yet another war in the Middle East, with a very uncertain future," said Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California.

"Look at Iraq. Look at Libya," added freshman Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, an Iraq War veteran, fearful that recent hard lessons have not been learned about such intervention.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was among those who argued that the U.S. cannot ignore ISIS and the "genocide of religious minorities." She emphasized that the training will occur outside of Syria, and noted: "This is not an authorization of use of military force. I do not support, nor will I support, combat troops on the ground. That is not what this is about."

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy added, "A threat that has been ignored for too long must no longer be tolerated." And Majority Whip Steve Scalise said, "Americans know this is something that ultimately we will have to confront if we do not address it now with swift action."

"This will not do everything," said the amendment's sponsor, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon. "But it is an important step at this time … to give the commander in chief the authority he needs to protect us in this area."

Pelosi and Speaker John Boehner insisted they had not pressured their members to vote either way on the Syria amendment.

But there was much angling behind the scenes, including the coupling of the president's Syria request with a must-pass spending bill. In addition, a combination of pressures and cajoling from the president and his administration on Democrats, and warnings by former Vice President Dick Cheney against growing isolationist trends in the GOP, helped pave the way for its passage.

Unrelated provisions in the spending bill also attracted votes. Among them is a reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank to prevent it from shuttering on Oct. 1, even if its nine-month renewal was far shorter than supporters pushed for.

But it was the Syria amendment that so split Republicans from other Republicans, and Democrats from others in their own party.

Several of the amendment's opponents said they supported airstrikes and other counterterrorism measures. But they noted that Syria is a nation in the midst of a complex civil war, pitting Shia and Sunni, authoritarians and al-Qaida, and other groups.

"I don't see how we are going to be able to thread the needle by arming the good guys without making the bad guys stronger, as well," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

Rachel Roubein contributed to this article.

(Image via Flickr user Lingjing Bao/Talk Radio News Service)

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The Head-On Politics of Going Around Congress on Climate Change

Michael Catalini and Ben Geman, National Journal — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:40:24 -0400

On the surface, word that the Obama administration is negotiating a global climate change pact that probably doesn't need Senate ratification is bad news for Republicans. It could amount to a policy setback for the GOP and offers the president a potential legacy item.

But beneath the surface, an emissions deal that avoids Capitol Hill would give Republicans another political arrow to aim at Democrats, bolstering the GOP's argument that the president circumvents Congress when it serves his policies.

"Any agreement that bypasses Congress would not only violate the Constitution but would be an abusive overreach by a president who continues to think he is above the rule of law," said Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas.

The topic drew renewed attention Wednesday after a front-page New York Times story laid out in detail what has long been known in climate-policy circles: The United Nations accord that negotiators hope to finalize next year likely won't be a formal new treaty, and therefore won't need sign-off from the Senate, which would have been an impossible barrier.

Privately, Republicans are saying it's too early to sketch a plan to block the move. But foes may still have recourse.

One possibility is using the appropriations process to block funds for implementing the deal, suggested Steve Bell, a former Senate Republican aide to the Budget Committee. "Other than just complaining about it, the only real thing they could do would be through appropriations," he said.

But even if Republicans win control of the Senate, the chances of getting such a measure signed into law are remote.

Still, Republicans, particularly House Republicans, might bring up a messaging bill explicitly prohibiting the president's pact, Bell added. They'd probably find support among pro-coal Democrats such as Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, who knocked the "end-run around Congress."

Wednesday's attacks from Senate GOP leaders and candidates tracks with what is becoming a well-worn political dialogue between the GOP and the White House, one that stretches back at least as far as the president's pledge to use his pen and phone to go around GOP opposition in Congress.

The antipathy runs deep, with Republicans charging that the president refuses to work with them, and the White House lobbing the same charge in return. The result has been a legislative impasse, with the White House casting Republicans as obstructionists and the GOP billing the president as lawless.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, locked in a close reelection contest in Kentucky where he has linked his opponent to the president, panned the notion of avoiding Senate ratification, where a two-thirds vote is needed.

"Unfortunately, this would be just another of many examples of the Obama administration's tendency to abide by laws that it likes and to disregard laws it doesn't like—and to ignore the elected representatives of the people when they don't agree," he said in a statement.

(Image via Kodda/Shutterstock.com)

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The Senate's Scattershot Approach to Ferguson

Michael Catalini, National Journal — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 10:23:22 -0400

Even before Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department have wrapped up their investigation into the lethal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., some senators are planning a legislative response for when Congress returns next month.

No single measure has so far emerged as a consensus legislation, and it's unclear whether Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to introduce anything in the Senate. A spokesman for Reid did not comment.

But, in a sign that the emotions and outcry around Ferguson will carry into September, some lawmakers have already begun announcing their plans.

On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said she will convene a Financial and Contracting Oversight Subcommittee hearing in September to "examine federal programs that enable local police departments to acquire military equipment," according to a statement from her office.

That particular issue has grabbed headlines since Brown's fatal shooting by a Ferguson police officer and during the ensuing protests, when officers deployed what many described as militarized equipment, including tear gas and rubber bullets.

In a show of just how high-profile Ferguson and police response have become, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a potential 2016 presidential contender, even penned an op-ed in Time under the headline "We Must Demilitarize the Police."

McCaskill plans to invite various stakeholders to the hearing, according to the statement, with more details expected soon.

Still, a bill dealing with police militarization seems unlikely to make it to the Senate floor. In an interview with a Nevada television station this week, Reid sounded supportive of the use of military equipment in police departments nationwide.

"The issue is this: Whether we should allow surplus equipment the military has to go to police departments. I say yes," Reid said on the show Nevada Newsmakers. "We have police departments all over the country, including those in Nevada, who are desperate for more resources. And the mere fact that you have the equipment doesn't mean that you have to use it."

Despite Reid's position, Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan promised a review of the law that allows the Pentagon to sell its equipment to police departments.

"We intended this equipment to keep police officers and their communities safe from heavily armed drug gangs and terrorist incidents," Levin said in a statement. "Before the defense authorization bill comes to the Senate floor, we will review this program to determine if equipment provided by the Defense Department is being used as intended."

It is a potentially crucial point, since both chambers of Congress and members of both parties assume the defense authorization will be passed before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont linked the shooting with youth unemployment and he plans to introduce legislation on that front. His proposal would include $4 billion to the Labor Department for grants aimed at setting up summer and year-round job opportunities for poor youth. His bill would also include $1.5 billion for competitive grants to local communities for work-based training, according to a letter Sanders sent to his colleagues.

"If we are going to reduce youth violence and instill hope and a bright future for the young people in this country, we have got to provide them with the jobs and the skills they need to pay for a college education to and to move up the economic ladder," Sanders wrote.

(Image via njene/Shutterstock.com)

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How Jeff Sessions Became a Leader in the Immigration Fight

Michael Catalini, National Journal — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:53:00 -0400

In recent months, Sen. Jeff Sessions has often been the loudest voice in Washington opposing President Obama's immigration policies.

In the Senate on Tuesday, his was the only Republican voice. Literally.

Five days after his colleagues scampered home for August recess, before a chamber that was empty except for presiding officer Sen. Carl Levin, Sessions delivered a half-hour speech calling on Democrats to pass the House's nearly $700 million border security supplemental as well as a bill aimed at curbing the president's power to defer deportations.

There's little chance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accepting Sessions' invitation.

But Sessions' speech had as much to do with bolstering conservatives on immigration as it did with locking down a vote. Indeed, Sessions has emerged as a leader of the party's proponents of tightening the nation's immigration laws, reining in Obama's executive orders and, above, all staking out opposition to what many on the right call amnesty.

Just last week, Sessions—the top Republican on the Budget Committee—fired the procedural bullet that brought down Senate Democrats' $2.7 billion supplemental funding bill for the border security crisis. It was his budget point of order that Democrats failed to overcome in a 50-44 vote, 10 votes short.

He also appears to be serving as a an intellectual hub for conservatives, with some House GOP aides and lawmakers citing his influence last week in halting the initial bills proposed by that chamber's Republican leadership.

"Clearly Sessions was instrumental," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "He has really stiffened backbones."

Sessions himself denies that he lobbied members, but did not rule out that he influenced the outcome and said he met with some House members, including Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry of North Carolina.

"I have worked real hard to put out good, sound information that people can rely on," he said in an interview. "And I think some of the work we produced and put out did influence—hopefully, it influenced some people; I've been told that it does."

The final House bill served to unite the fraying GOP conference, no small achievement in a Congress that has seen Republicans' internal disagreements spill into the open.

"The result was people who felt for a while that they might have been ignored felt a part of the process and it resulted, I think, in unity," Sessions said.

Republicans have been split over how to proceed on immigration since national leaders began to call for comprehensive immigration reform in their well-documented 2012 Republican National Committee autopsy, and the Senate last year passed an overhaul to the current system with GOP support.

The recent border crisis again put the issue under the national spotlight, and House Republicans were poised to succumb to internal divisions and leave town before passing anything in response to President Obama's request for $3.7 billion and the Senate Democratic bill to appropriate $2.7 billion.

Sessions saw what was happening, with the media already lambasting Republicans over their disagreement, and suggested that the House had to pass something in response.

"What I would say is, the whole House came to realize that they should not go home without having voted in opposition to the president's stated proposal to grant unlawfully 5 to 6 million people legal status and work permits. I mean, how could they ignore that?" he said.

Sessions's argument centers on the notion that White House is bordering on "lawlessness," by suggesting that it may expand legal protections to up to 6 million people.

Indeed, it's a position that many Republicans have seized on. Potential 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz of Texas regularly criticizes the Obama administration for overstepping its authorities and blamed the border crisis directly on the president's 2012 executive order.

But unlike Cruz, Sessions's motivations are not viewed through the lens of 2016.

"Sessions is the one actually putting out the arguments," Krikorian said. "Cruz is more Hollywood."

Alabama political strategist Brent Buchanan also pointed out that Sessions has long opposed amnesty, even working against George W. Bush's efforts at an overhaul in 2006 and 2007.

"You might fall asleep if you listen to him speak for 30 minutes, but he's also very respected," he said.

In Tuesday's speech, Sessions even suggested that federal employees tasked with carrying out executive orders disobey them. "Their duty is to say, 'No,' " he said.

The immigration issue has dogged Republicans politically, with many pundits and even some moderate lawmakers pointing out that opposing a pathway to citizenship could turn away the growing Hispanic voting bloc.

Sessions does not see an incompatibility between his position and the party's campaign goals, though.

"It absolutely is correct that the Republican Party needs to embrace … our neighbors and reach out to the Hispanic community," he said.

But whether the party supports Hispanics is not the question. Instead, the issue is whether the U.S. is a country of laws, he said.

"I think, in many ways, the mainstream media has framed this as somehow a debate over whether or not you like immigration or Hispanics when in truth the American people, their heart has been right on this from the beginning," Sessions said. "They have not been against immigration. They're not for eliminating immigration, but they are very much opposed to lawlessness and injustice in the system."

(Image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore)

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A Historically Unproductive Congress Inches Toward Finish Line

Billy House and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 09:15:46 -0400

This Congress began with braggadocio about what it would accomplish.

But what came in roaring like a legislative lion is on track to go out like a lamb, barring an unlikely burst of lawmaking in September or a lame-duck session.

A promise to enact a tax-code overhaul remains an empty shell of a bill, left for some future Congress. Optimism that regular order had returned to budgeting, and to the 12 annual spending bills, has been abandoned. And other legislation depicted as essential—because of expiring previous versions or other significant needs—is also now being kicked down the road or left unaddressed, like comprehensive immigration reform, which the Senate passed in 2013 but the House is not taking up.

There's still time to do some of these things—but not much.

When they return to Washington in September, there are just 12 scheduled legislative days (and that number may be cut) before the Nov. 4 midterm election. A potentially tumultuous post-election session, especially if Republicans win control of the Senate for the next Congress, may not be a reliable fallback for moving items that have been stuck.

Much of the unresolved legislation in this Congress is significant, including dozens of tax breaks that expired in December and the full array of appropriations bills for the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1. Already, House Speaker John Boehner is teeing up action in September on a stopgap spending measure so that the government does not run out of money after September.

Decisions are also needed on miscellaneous tariffs, terrorism risk insurance, the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, rechartering the Export-Import Bank, and perhaps re-upping long-term unemployment-insurance benefits.

"We've not had a productive Congress," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "We can't push everything back to the so-called lame duck."

Added House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who is serving in his 17th two-year session: "It's the least productive Congress in which I have served."

House Republicans were particularly vocal about their plans to come up with an alternative to the health care law. That aim was made seemingly even more definite in January at their conference retreat in Maryland, when then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor said, "House Republicans will rally and pass an alternative to Obamacare this year."

But Cantor is no longer majority leader, following his stunning Virginia primary defeat in June, and House Republicans still have not done what he said they would do.

But the poster child for inaction may be the promises at the start of 2013 that redoing the nation's tax code was the top aim. In the House, Boehner even reserved the prime legislative real estate of "H.R. 1" for such a package.

"Fixing our tax code is one of my highest legislative priorities for this Congress," Boehner said in speech to the Credit Union National Association. "It's time we shift the balance of power from the tax collector to the taxpayer."

The House Ways and Means Committee, and its retiring Chairman Dave Camp, did a great deal of work on tax reform, as did former Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who is now an ambassador. But Boehner's early enthusiasm, and indications from Camp that his panel would write, mark up, and pass major tax-reform legislation, never translated into an actual bill. The proposal that Camp did release got a tepid reception from his own leadership. And any major tax-reform efforts are being left to another Congress.

Statistically, there is no dispute that the productivity of this congressional session has been exceptionally low—at least in terms of historical comparisons of the number of bills passed (though current House leaders argue this does not account for the substance of the bills, and that they have cut back on commemorative or feel-good legislation).

Congress has passed just 142 public laws since this two-year session began in January 2013—including 70 that became law this year. And that puts this House and Senate, as of August, on a trajectory to be the least-productive Congress for making laws since at least 1947, as far back as numbers go in the official "Resume of Congressional Activity," updated monthly in the Congressional Record.

The next-least productive? Well, a search does not have to too go far, because that is the previous, 2011-12 Congress, with a total of 238 public bills passed and signed into law. The next lowest is the 280 public bills passed in the 1995-96 Congress—the product of the 1994 wave election that gave control of the House to Republicans.

Boehner and other Republicans point to how many one-chamber bills they have passed—that is, those which the Democratic-led Senate have not taken up.

"There are 352 bills passed by the House sitting in the United States Senate. Almost all of those bills passed the House on a bipartisan basis, so go take your complaints to Harry Reid," said Boehner.

But others say there is nothing impressive about a House GOP majority that passes one-sided bills without more effort at bipartisan outreach.

"It's astonishing what they haven't done," said House Rules Committee top Democrat Louise Slaughter of New York, who argues Democrats are typically not consulted in legislation, and even given only eleventh-hour notice of some bills headed to floor action.

"They haven't done anything. When you look at this economy—it could be roaring if they'd done a stimulus bill, an infrastructure bill," she said. "And the highway bill is useless. Nobody can plan a road in six months; there's not enough money in there, anyway.

"So, everything's underfunded, starved to death, and we're just letting the country get moldy, is really what we're doing," Slaughter said.

The Senate has passed fewer bills in part because of disagreement between Reid and the Republicans over amendments. Reid routinely prevents the GOP from offering amendments on legislation. That spurs Republicans, who have the power to stop Reid's agenda through filibusters, to block bills from passing.

It also inflames partisan passions. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for example, delivered a fiery speech Thursday night when it was clear Reid would not allow GOP amendments on the supplemental appropriations bill.

"I want to have some amendments debated. I want to be able to tell the people of my state that are being flooded by immigrants—I want to be able to tell them that I had a proposal representing them here in the United States Senate, that I wanted it debated and I wanted it voted on," McCain said. "Is that a hell of a lot to ask here?"

Reid, though, steers his criticism in two directions: One is that Senate Republicans are obstructionists. The other is that House Republicans are extremists. It may be political theater, but they're the ideas that infuse Reid's script.

"If they keep up the sue-and-impeach show, we'll stay right here working until they finally get serious about giving the American people a fair shot," Reid said.

When they return, Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have outlined a predictable path forward: a mix of must-pass legislation—bills to keep the government running, for example—and a dose of messaging bills that they calculate will help them in November.

Reid sketched the September schedule before lawmakers split town, and a central part of his message to senators was: We'll be working for two straight weeks, Fridays and weekends included.

The majority leader has threatened working weekends and Fridays (senators usually take off after Thursday) before, but rarely follows through. In fact the Senate has not worked a weekend since the government shutdown, when Congress worked for three weekends in a row in late September and early October, according to the Library of Congress.

But Reid is insisting September will be different.

The target date for the Senate to recess for the election is Sept. 23. Bolstering his calls for longer work weeks, Reid held a luncheon with committee chairmen this week during which their message to him was that senators should work the weekends, the majority leader said.

"No one can say you need to give us notice. You have notice," he said.

Reid's To Do list includes appropriations bills to keep the government from shutting down; the Internet Tax Freedom Act; the Export-Import Bank; the National Defense Authorization Act; a constitutional amendment from Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico on campaign finance reform; and the Democratic Caucus's passel of messaging bills: college affordability, the minimum wage, Hobby Lobby, and student debt.

Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, stopped outside the Senate chamber before recessing, was asked how senators could possibly get through the full schedule confronting them when they return.

Durbin answered immediately: "We're gonna work through the weekends if we have to."

(Image via Frank L. Junior / Shutterstock.com)

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Senate Border Funding Bill Goes Down

Michael Catalini and Rachel Roubein, National Journal — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 09:39:43 -0400

The Senate failed Thursday to write the White House a $3.57 billion check to address the crisis at the border, Western wildfires, and Israel's missile defense system.

The bill went down on a 50-44 procedural vote that required 60 votes to carry. The failure and the Senate's impending departure for August recess, which leaves no time for Congress to resolve legislative differences, make it appear certain that President Obama will not see a dime of the supplemental funding for what both sides agree is a crisis of significant proportions.

Democrats cast the bill's failure as an urgent mistake, and they predicted that without the supplemental funding the administration would have to move money from other government accounts to cover the cost of managing the border crisis.

"We could have an Ebola crisis … and we're fooling around cutting [Health and Human Services]," said Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. "Failing to act is irresponsible."

The bill went down for a number of reasons, including Republican frustration that Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked amendments, but also because the GOP wanted to see significant policy changes in the law, including rolling back the president's 2012 order to defer legal action against immigrant children, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

"Their bill does nothing, zero, to solve the underlying crisis," Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said before the vote.

Democrats stood adamantly opposed to adding any policy changes, and Reid lost only two Democrats, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who defected to vote with the GOP. Behind closed doors, many Democrats viscerally opposed making policy changes, according to Senate Democratic aides, but most Democrats refrained from taking to the floor to voice their support.

"Well that's gonna be hard to come by at this late day, and because it's a life-and-death situation, I hope that we can deal with it in that context," Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin said before the vote. "The sooner we can get a clean supplemental passed the more likely it is that it'll help."

While Democratic leaders failed to deliver President Obama's funding request, they succeeded in keeping most of their caucus united, which contrasted sharply with the Republican House, which scuttled a planned vote Thursday afternoon.

The drama in the Senate took the form of Sen. John McCain of Arizona booming against Reid's amendment prohibition in an off-the-cuff speech shortly before the Senate voted.

"Now we have a humanitarian crisis on our border, a humanitarian crisis of incredible proportion, where thousands of young people while they're being transported by the coyotes, young women are being raped, they're falling off trains, terrible things are happening. And what are we presented here in the the United States Senate?" McCain said. "I say shame on you. I say shame on you for not allowing those of us who represent the states that are most affected by this to have an amendment, an amendment voted on. That is unbelievable to me."

By keeping Republicans from offering amendments, Reid saves members of his caucus from taking potentially risky political votes. At the same time he alienates Republicans and invites their fury.

Meanwhile, in the House the GOP headed into a closed-door conference meeting Thursday afternoon to hash out changes to an emergency supplemental and will reconvene for another private meeting Friday morning.

A vote will likely be held Friday, but it's one that holds no real weight as the Senate headed home for the August recess Thursday night.

Profound differences separate the chambers' emergency supplemental packages. The House bill merges policy changes with funding, while the Senate's sticks to providing money Obama requested to help curb the crisis.

The Democratic bill amounts to a $1 billion cut to the president's $3.7 billion request for the border crisis, in which some 60,000 children have streamed across the U.S. border from Central America.

The measure also provided $615 million for wildfires in the West as well as $225 million for the Israeli missile defense system known as Iron Dome.

"The issues that I'm advocating are deeply personal to me and I believe deeply personal to other senators," Mikulski said.

The action came on the Senate's last day before a five-week recess and ahead of a shortened work period before the election that saw senators eager to get back home.

When asked whether there were discussions underway to reach a compromise that could pass Congress, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah paused for a moment.

"The plan is to just get out of here," he said before the vote. "People just want to get it wrapped up and just get back home."

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House GOP Leaders Pull Votes on Border-Funding Package

Billy House, Michael Catalini, and Tim Alberta, National Journal — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 15:41:09 -0400

In stunning fashion, House Republican leaders on Thursday suddenly backed off a planned vote on an emergency border-funding package, meaning lawmakers may head home for the August recess without addressing the hot-button issue.

The legislation had been unlikely to advance in the Senate, and already had been ticketed for a presidential veto. But the decision to pull the $659 million measure represented a major embarrassment for Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team—especially for Rep. Steve Scalise. He does not officially become majority whip until Friday, but he and his new whip team had made this the first bill in which they had become actively engaged in vote-gathering.

"This situation shows the intense concern within our conference—and among the American people—about the need to ensure the security of our borders and the president's refusal to faithfully execute our laws," GOP leaders said in a joint statement after the votes were canceled.

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy said on the floor that it is "possible" that there will be votes later Thursday, reversing his office's earlier statement. House Republicans are having a closed-door meeting at 3 pm to figure out the next steps.

The decision to pull the bill from consideration came despite a carrot extended to reluctant conservatives to back the spending bill in exchange for a second vote later Thursday on a GOP measure to rein in Obama's discretionary authority to defer deportations.

That is something that hardliners, including Sen. Ted Cruz, have been insisting should be part of any border-crisis legislation, even though it is not directly related to the crisis.

If nothing else, the House passage of its own crisis funding bill was seen as giving House Republicans room to claim over the next weeks that they at least did something before their break to address the surge of tens of thousands of undocumented minors from Central America pouring into the U.S.—even if what was accomplished was a one-chamber bill.

But the measure is a far cry from the $3.7 billion request Obama gave to Congress earlier this month. The bill also provides significantly less than the $2.7 billion contained in a Senate bill to deal with the border crisis, which was also set to be voted on.

And in the end, Republican leaders apparently were unable to attract enough votes to feel assured of getting the measure passed—either with the support of their own members, or in some combination with Democrats, whose leaders had opposed it.

"We've got a caucus of widely disparate views and it never really gelled ... 218 on our side to support the bill," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers said.

Scalise and his incoming whip team felt confident Wednesday night and into Thursday that they had sufficient Republican votes to pass the border bill regardless of any Democratic support, and GOP leaders were prepared to move the bill to the floor for an early-afternoon vote.

"As of this afternoon the plan was still to move forward," said a senior GOP aide.

But around 1:45 p.m. lawmakers were alerted on their cell phones that the vote had been abruptly cancelled. No explanation was immediately offered, leaving dazed lawmakers to ask one another what had just happened.

Democrats, meanwhile, were giddy at the news of the Republican collapse. In the House basement, Colorado Rep. Jared Polis spotted an alert on his phone and hollered to a colleague: "You hear Speaker Cruz messed up their efforts over here again?"

Scalise's new whip team was privately blaming the opposition of Sen. Jeff Sessions , R-Ala., for causing last-second problems leading up the planned vote.

According to a member of the team, Scalise has told them the six Republicans of the Alabama delegation decided not to back the bill after being lobbied by Sessions. He has opposed the bill because it does not itself contain language to freeze Obama from expanding his unilateral deferrals.

Sessions also questioned last week on the Senate floor whether agencies involved in the crisis are really "in dire need of supplemental funding from this Congress." But mostly, said the member of the whip team, Sessions' opposition was to the lack of DACA language in the House supplemental bill. He was not satisfied with letting a separate vote occur on that issue.

Some Texas members of the delegation also were unsatisfied, said the whip member.

"We had it – we even had Justin Amash as one of the ones with us," said the member, referring to the Michigan Republican with a history of breaking with leadership.

"When Jeff Sessions came over here, it gummed everything up," he said.

"We didn't want to put it on the floor with just 215 votes," he said of the number they were at, because he said Democratic leaders would then get involved in trying to pressure members of their party from crossing over and providing the two or three additional votes needed.

Some outside conservative groups, like Heritage Action, also lobbied against the bill.

"The was the Scalise whip team's first big bill -- and having to rely on Democrats would not have engendered much confidence," said Dan Holler, a Heritage spokesman. "And what we hear is it became clear they needed Democratic votes."

That opposition was frustrating to the many Republican lawmakers who were eager to get something passed before recess.

"I think we'd be reckless for us to leave Washington without voting on this border security bill," said Republican Rep. Charlie Dent. "I say put the bill out on the floor for a vote. If it fails, it fails. And those who vote against it go home and explain it."

As for Scalise and McCarthy, Dent said: "It's not a great way to start, obviously, but I'm not blaming the new leadership."

Rep. Devin Nunes, a close ally of Speaker John Boehner, called the influence of Cruz and other foes "not helpful. ... It's just shocking to me that some of these guys want to turn over their voting cards to the senate or some of these outside groups."

But other Republicans dismissed the impact that Cruz, the Texas senator who hosted some House colleagues for pizza in his office last night, moved the needle on this vote.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the immigration hard-liner who has led the opposition to the border bill, attended the Cruz meeting last night and said the senator "listened more than he talked" and did not attempt to whip against the bill.

"He did not utter a word of opposition," King said.

Whatever the cause of the meltdown, the unexpected collapse had House leadership aides seething on Thursday afternoon. One senior Republican said "at least" 200 GOP lawmakers supported the bill, and added that members were "stunned" to see it pulled from the floor.

That left Boehner and his leadership team scrambling to pull together a 3 p.m. special conference meeting at the request of "pissed off" members who wanted to vent at colleagues, according to one senior GOP aide.

Meanwhile, the Senate has not yet set a vote time for its $3.57 billion supplemental for the border, Israel's Iron Dome and Western U.S. wildfires. But with news that the House may have pulled its bill, Democratic leaders are already predicting that the president will have to act on his own.

Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin suggested the president might move funds from elsewhere in the administration's budget to deal with the border crisis.

"The president is gonna have to respond to it and that means he's gonna have to try to martial the resources from other places," Durbin said. "That means cutting back spending in some other areas, so it won't be without some pain."

They're also pinning political blame on Republicans and suggesting that the GOP stymied the president and Senate Democrats' attempts to address the crisis.

"The president has tried to respond, in a humane, sensible legal way and sadly the House of Representatives is unable to get a majority to support that approach," Durbin said.

In the Senate, the Democrats are poised to block Republicans from offering amendments on the supplemental bill.

"Of course we want to go forward with a clean supplemental otherwise we're gonna get bogged down, unlikely to pass anything, and the House may just pick up and leave," Durbin added.

Senate Republicans are holding out for the chance to offer amendments. Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said there will be a number of difference measures offered, but did not elaborate.

He also blamed President Obama for the House's failure to pass a supplemental.

"It doesn't help when there's no leadership at the White House," Cornyn said. "So as usual nothing happens."

The issue might resurface when the Senate returns in September, suggested Durbin, answering affirmatively when asked if lawmakers would consider the funding later.

This post is breaking and may be updated.

Sarah Mimms and Rachel Roubein contributed to this article.

(Image via Flickr user medilldc)

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Senate Remains Stalled on Spending Bills

Michael Catalini, National Journal — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 09:54:42 -0400

The Senate is taking up only the second spending bill to reach the floor this year—the $3.57 billion supplemental for the border crisis, wildfires, and the defense of Israel—and prospects for passage are as slim as they were for the first one that died in June.

And so without any of the 12 annual appropriations bills completed two months before fiscal year 2015 begins—and with a five-week recess just ahead—the talk has turned toward stopgap measures.

Democratic senators, long bearish on the prospects of jump-starting the dormant appropriations process after the two-year bipartisan budget deal passed last year, are now pointing to the likelihood that a short-term continuing resolution will be necessary to keep the government running past Oct. 1.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, said he expects the Senate to take up a short-term spending bill before the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30 and to extend funding until December, after the midterms.

It's too early to sketch the contours of the bill, senators say, but some suggest the work done so far by the Appropriations Committee could serve as a road map.

"I would note that an enormous amount of bipartisan work has gone into forging bipartisan appropriations bills over here, and there is a bipartisan sense that that work should not be wasted," said Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Harkin suggested the same, saying he hopes the committee's work will be folded into an omnibus—a large-scale bill that would reflect the work already done on the spending measures this Congress.

At stake is a more than trillion-dollar budget for discretionary spending. Last year's budget deal capped spending for fiscal year 2014 at $1.012 trillion, with that figure rising to $1.014 trillion in 2015. While the House has passed eight appropriations bills, the Senate has yet to move one off the floor.

The Senate has struggled with spending bills this year, not because of roadblocks at the committee level but because of partisan disagreements over amendments once the bills reached the floor. That's what torpedoed a three-part spending bill that included funds for Agriculture, Transportation, and Commerce last month.

The fight over amendments was also on display this week, when Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland sought to bring the funding bill for military construction and Veterans Affairs to the floor.

"I am not trying to stiff-arm the opportunity to offer amendments," Mikulski said this week. "But we have 72 hours left before we take this really long break—really long, long, long, very long—did I say long?—break. I do not think when you need health care for veterans, when you need to modernize technology [at the VA], when you need to crack the backlog—while we are kind of basking in the sun somewhere, I do not want [veterans] in line."

Appropriations ranking member Richard Shelby of Alabama blocked the request. Shelby wanted alternating amendments between Democrats and Republicans, and Mikulski rejected the idea.

"My response should not be interpreted as a pugnacious rejection," she said. "I appreciate the civil and courteous way the senator from Alabama has responded, but in a nutshell, what the senator from Alabama is requesting is that we not pick up the supplemental, that we bring up the VA-MilCon instead. I would like to bring up both bills."

Not all Democrats oppose letting Republicans have amendments. Some say they support allowing amendments as long as they are relevant to the legislation on the floor.

Asked whether it would be better to pass no spending bills than to allow Republican amendments, Harkin said: "No. I always felt that we ought to allow Republicans to offer amendments—germane to the bill. If they can agree to that, then fine."

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Congress Tries to Cram in Border Response, VA Reforms Before Summer Recess

Billy House and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 14:45:04 -0400

With the start of their summer recess later this week tantalizing lawmakers, Congress has a crammed getaway agenda—from dealing with the border crisis, to finalizing a patch for the Highway Trust Fund, to suing President Obama.

There also is optimism—but not necessarily confidence—that a House and Senate conference agreement can finally be reached on reforming the embattled Veterans Affairs Department.

Both chambers have Thursday scheduled as their final legislative day before the break, which will extend through August and into early September, providing a key period of campaigning in a midterm election year.

But neither the House nor the Senate wants to face any backlash for not first doing something to deal with the surge of unaccompanied minors at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Yet, with the clock ticking, the two chambers remain on separate tracks regarding how to respond to Obama's request for $3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the problems.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland has unveiled a supplemental funding bill totaling $3.57 billion that would give the president $1 billion less than he sought to address the surge of some 60,000 children from Central America across the southern border. A floor vote could come this week.

Among House Republicans, there appear to be significant hurdles to unifying behind one approach.

GOP leaders are expected on Monday to come up with a scaled-back plan that could provide less than $1 billion for the crisis, geared to specific spending like deploying the National Guard to the border and returning children to their home countries by plane.

But some conservatives might oppose even this lower level of new spending and force GOP leaders to turn to Democrats to get the measure passed. It all represents a first real legislative test for Majority Leader-elect Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip-elect Steve Scalise, who have to decide between making deals with Democrats or not passing a bill—and causing considerable embarrassment for the new leadership team.

Against this already combustible backdrop, House Republicans also have set a Rules Committee hearing for Tuesday to establish procedures for a floor vote later in the week on a resolution authorizing Speaker John Boehner to launch a lawsuit against Obama over his executive actions.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have reached an agreement that would provide for the House-passed highway-fund patch to clear the floor. A vote is expected by midweek, said a senior Democratic Senate aide.

The deal provides for votes on amendments from Republican Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mike Lee of Utah, as well as from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. There will also be another vote on an amendment from Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Senate aides expect the House version of the bill will pass and make it to the president's desk. The nearly $11 billion bill shores up the trust fund through May and is paid for through a process known as pension smoothing, which allows companies to contribute less to pension funds, thus increasing their tax bill. Outside groups criticize the pay-for as a gimmick in part because in the long run, smoothing ends up costing the government.

There will also be a cloture vote on the Bring Jobs Home Act, a political-messaging bill cosponsored by Democratic Sen. John Walsh of Montana, who faces plagiarism allegations after a New York Times article showed he improperly used the work of other authors in his master's thesis. The bill, which would give businesses a 20 percent tax credit for bringing jobs into the U.S. and deny them a credit for leaving the country, is not expected to get cloture, the Democratic aide said.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Relations Committee is holding a hearing on the status of the nuclear arms talks with Iran, with testimony from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen. The committee is also considering the nomination of John Tefft to be ambassador to Russia. The hearing comes as U.S. relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia smolder after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

On Monday, the Senate will vote on the nominations of Pamela Harris to be a judge on the 4th Circuit; Joseph Mohorovic to be commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission; Elliot Kaye to be chairman of the CPSC; and Brian McKeon to be a principal deputy Defense undersecretary.

Here's what else Congress is planning to do this week:

DEFENSE

The state of legislation to reform the Veterans Affairs Department in an attempt to stamp out preventable veteran deaths appeared stalled after a lot of drama last week. But on Friday aides to the Senate and House Veterans' Affairs committee chairmen—independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida—said negotiations were back on track.

Miller said late last week that the conference committee would meet again Monday to discuss a path forward and that he expects to have a conference report on the president's desk before Congress leaves town on Thursday.

Last week Sanders and Miller each proffered revisions to the VA legislation, which is intended to reduce wait times for health care, hold VA officials more accountable, and ensure that veterans receive timely access to care, even if it means going outside the VA.

But the two sides have been at loggerheads over how to treat a late-breaking request by the VA for $17.6 billion in additional funds and have struggled with how—and how much—to contain costs of the legislation.

On Thursday talks between the two lawmakers had devolved into a public pissing match, with Miller trying to hold his own conference committee meeting and Sanders taking to the Senate floor to insinuate that Miller's negotiating tactics were less mature than those of a sixth-grader. Late Thursday the two apparently had a "productive" conversation and were supposedly recommitted to trying to reach a compromise. But time is short.

The Senate is expected to easily confirm Robert McDonald to be the next VA secretary before it adjourns for recess.

Also this week the House Foreign Affairs Committee digs into the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner and the crisis in the Ukraine with a joint subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning, followed by an afternoon hearing on Iran nuclear negotiations.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also explores Iran negotiations with a hearing Tuesday.

On Wednesday the House Armed Services Committee looks into security concerns in Afghanistan.

ENERGY

While the Environmental Protection Agency holds four public hearings on its rule to slash carbon emissions from existing power plants, Republicans are preparing their counterprogramming. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power holds a Tuesday hearing on how the Clean Power Plan could affect the electric grid, while the House Science Committee will meet Wednesday to talk about the plan in a hearing subtitled "Failure by Design."

On the Senate side, McConnell has vowed to speak at EPA's public hearing in Washington and will hold a press conference on his testimony. Expect other congressional opponents and supporters of the rule to speak out as well.

Two Senate committees will tackle the costs and impacts of climate change this week, starting with a Budget Committee hearing on how extreme weather impacts the federal budget. Chairman Patty Murray of Washington has warned in the past that climate change has led to rising emergency spending.

Also Tuesday, the Environment and Public Works Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the threats of climate change, including testimony from the commissioner of Florida's Broward County.

And the Senate Commerce Oceans Subcommittee will hold a hearing Tuesday following up on the Restore Act, the bill passed to help the Gulf Coast recover from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The hearing will in particular look at how a trust fund established under the act is being distributed and used by states, which have said they would like the money to flow faster.

HEALTH CARE

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will use the final week before the recess to continue hearings on the Affordable Care Act. On Monday, the Health Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled "Protecting Americans from Illegal Bailouts and Plan Cancellations Under the President's Health Care Law." The hearing will address the ACA's risk-corridors program and the ability of individuals to keep their group health plans, and will feature witnesses from the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and Georgetown University.

On Thursday, Energy and Commerce's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee will hear updates on the law's implementation from officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Government Accountability Office. GAO is expected to issue a new report the same day on the issues facing HealthCare.govat its launch last fall and the costs related to repairing the site and building the back end of the system.

The House is expected to vote this week on the resolution authorizing Boehner's lawsuit against Obama over delays to the ACA's employer mandate last year. The House Rules Committee approved the resolution on a 7-4 vote along party lines last week.

TECHNOLOGY

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on unauthorized third-party charges on consumers' cell-phone bills. The Federal Trade Commission recently sued T-Mobile for failing to stop the practice, known as "cramming."

Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, will hold a press conference Tuesday to release a GAO report on data caps. Eshoo has warned that the caps, which are primarily used by cell-phone carriers but also in some cases wireline Internet providers, could confuse consumers or be used anticompetitively.

The Senate is expected to take a major step forward on reforming the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy is likely to introduce a beefed up version of the USA Freedom Act early this week that has largely earned the backing of privacy advocates and the blessing of the administration.

A version of the Freedom Act, which would end bulk collection of domestic phone records, passed the House in May, but not before eleventh-hour negotiations prompted some tech companies and privacy advocates to drop their support. The Senate language being passed around late last week included enough additional privacy and transparency safeguards to satisfy many of those stakeholders. Aides said the bill may go straight to the floor for consideration, but a timetable is still in flux.

WHITE HOUSE

Obama will spend much of this week at the White House, leaving town only Tuesday evening and Wednesday when he will go to Kansas City, Mo., to talk on the economy and raise money for the Democrats.

On Monday, he will speak to a summit for Young African Leaders as part of the buildup to next week's African Leaders summit at the State Department.

On Thursday he will give a speech at the Housing and Urban Affairs Department and host a White House event for the Special Olympics.

Stacy Kaper, Sophie Novack, Jason Plautz, Brendan Sasso, Dustin Volz, and George E. Condon Jr. contributed to this article.

This article appears in the July 28, 2014 edition of NJ Daily.

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Both Parties Looking to Pare Down Obama's Border Funding

Billy House and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 10:03:53 -0400

House Republicans are planning on Wednesday to unveil their own plan to deal with the border crisis that would provide less than half of the $3.7 billion in emergency spending requested by President Obama.

In a closed-door meeting at the Capitol, House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers is to lay out a GOP funding alternative that senior aides have described as between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion.

Rogers himself said Tuesday that the spending will be entirely offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget—and geared to providing agencies and other operations involved in dealing with the surge of unaccompanied minors to the U.S.-Mexico border through Jan. 1.

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leaders are working on a supplemental spending bill that would grant the White House $1 billion less than it sought to address the influx of minors from Central America at the nation's southern border.

Also on Wednesday, Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas is expected to release a "set of principles" that have been put together by herself and other members of a House "border working group" created by Speaker John Boehner on immigration policy.

Most of the working group's policy recommendations are expected to become part of the House Republican alternative to Obama's proposal. They include:

The need to provide for more National Guard involvement along the border, including in humanitarian relief efforts, such as providing food, shelter, and health care.
Changing a 2008 anti-trafficking law to allow immigrant children at the border to be voluntarily and more swiftly returned to their home countries rather than being held for deportation hearings. Many Senate and House Democrats, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, have already said they would oppose this.
Putting an end to the so-called "catch and release" system for unaccompanied minors, and instead requiring that they be detained until they see an immigration judge. The recommendations will call for this to happen within five to seven days.
"Changing the narrative" by promoting—through advertisements in Central America—the notion that the U.S. will send immigrants back home if they do not cross the border legally.

In the Senate, Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland is crafting the $2.7 billion legislation along with leadership in the hopes of getting it to the floor before the Senate recesses for August.

"The United States has an obligation to help resolve these crises, but is running out of money," Mikulski said in a statement. "The costs are real and urgent. We don't save money by refusing to act or through delay."

Democrats are slashing nearly $1 billion from the president's request because they're angling to get Republican support, a senior Democratic aide said. Republicans have signaled they oppose the president's request, characterizing it as a blank check, and it's unclear whether they'll back Mikulski's downsized version of the legislation.

An aide to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he had not seen the measure yet, but raised a question about whether reforms to legal authorities would be included.

The Senate bill would authorize the funding through the end of the year, the Democratic aide said. It would also include $225 million for Israel's Iron Dome missile-defense system, which has gained notoriety in recent days for its effectiveness in repelling rockets from Hamas.

The bill will carry $615 million to address wildfires as well.

Left out of the bill are changes to the immigration system, which some lawmakers had sought.

Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he's hopeful the Senate could pass the measure soon, but he did not guarantee it.

"We feel comfortable where we are and would hope that Republicans would support us," he said.

The bill's path to passage is fraught. For one, the Senate has struggled all year with appropriations measures on the floor, with Reid and McConnell disagreeing over how to proceed on amendments. So far, the Senate has passed none of the 12 annual spending bills.

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Behind Dianne Feinstein's Calculated Rebuke of the White House

Michael Catalini and Elahe Izadi, National Journal — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 10:25:21 -0400

Dianne Feinstein wanted the White House off her lawn.

In the hours after the Obama administration revealed that it had traded five Taliban suspects for Bowe Bergdahl, the influential Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman went public with her anger. The president should have notified her, Feinstein said in a public rebuke that was so odd because it was so rare.

And as if to underline the virtue of her position, she said White House national security aide Tony Blinken called to apologize for not alerting her to the swap.

Suddenly, there was uncommon daylight between President Obama and the Democrat who serves as his chief congressional defender on all security and intelligence issues.

"She didn't need to go as far as she did," complained one senior Democratic aide.

Other aides echoed the sentiment. They complained that Feinstein's criticism—characterized as sharp by senior Democratic staff—made little sense in an environment where Republicans seize on any controversial White House maneuver or misstep as a potential campaign-trail boon.

And indeed, they latched onto it.

"What's perplexing, not only was it the president, but the president of the same party, which left a lot of unanswered questions and created a firestorm," said Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, himself a former head of the Intelligence Committee.

Feinstein has since tried to rein in her pique and rewrite the episode. "I was just asked a question," she said when asked about reports that she was at odds with the White House over Bergdahl. "I gave a simple answer. I'm not going to make another comment. Thank you."

And when pressed, she went so far as to defend the White House's lack of communication.

"Wherever I go, that's the question. 'Has the White House called you? Well, why hasn't the White House called you?' I mean, please," Feinstein said. "The White House has a lot of things to do. I just spoke with the White House chief of staff, the senior [National Security Council] people. This happens all the time. So please don't make that an issue. There are a lot of things that are issues. This is not one of them."

But those who know Feinstein say she knew what she was doing when she publicly challenged the White House for failing to notify Congress before letting terrorism suspects leave Guantanamo. It was a product of the frustration that all of them feel as administrations repeatedly and increasingly cut Congress out of the loop on intelligence matters.

The only difference is that this time, the slight was great enough to irk even this White House's great defender.

"I'm just telling you that we've been battling," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who chaired the committee from 2007 to 2009. "That's all I've done. I was on the committee before 9/11, and all we've done is fight this issue, of the administration not really wanting to brief the Senate."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, defended Feinstein's rebuke. "Dianne Feinstein is a very thoughtful senator. She thinks through every issue very thoroughly and she has the benefit just like I do of an extensive background on this proposal as well as the individuals involved," he said. "Like me she's never questioned the Bergdahl side of it other than they told us they were gonna give us 30 days' notice and they didn't. And that's not right. That's sticking it in the eye of Congress and they shouldn't have done that."

The fallout from the Bergdahl swap has certainly strained the congressional-White House relationship, members say, but to what extent is uncertain. On a committee whose work is classified and hearings are behind closed doors, aides and panel members are reluctant to talk about tension with the administration. "In recent history … this is unprecedented," said Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, a former GOP chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

But had Feinstein or any other senator wanted to pound the administration further, they could have when the Senate considered the intelligence reauthorization, which passed unanimously just this month.

For its part, the Obama administration denies its relationship with Feinstein took a hit over the Bergdahl swap. And, like Feinstein, White House officials are suggesting the split is not an issue.

"The fact that this partnership persists, even when we don't see eye-to-eye, is a testament to the strength of this vital relationship and our shared commitment to keeping the nation safe," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Certainly, Feinstein's relationship with the White House has had ups and downs. She was a staunch defender of the administration's positions after the leak of the National Security Agency's data-collection program last year. She also agrees with the president that the detention center in Guantanamo Bay should be closed. But in March, Feinstein took to the Senate floor to accuse the CIA of searching Intelligence Committee staff computers to allegedly undermine a congressional investigation.

And in 2009, when Obama tapped Leon Panetta, a former member of Congress and Clinton White House chief of staff, Feinstein objected, arguing the president should have chosen someone from within the intel community. Her objections were not enough to derail Panetta, but they did result in an apology from Vice President Joe Biden, which led to Feinstein saying she would support the president's choice.

Indeed, it seems Senate Democrats, Feinstein included, are willing to forgive the White House—if only after creating a stir that precedes an apology.

"The White house, to their credit, has said, 'We made a mistake,' " said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. "So I always jump up and go from here."

George E. Condon Jr. contributed to this article.

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White House Knew Bergdahl Swap Would Go Through a Day Before It Happened

Michael Catalini and Elahe Izadi, National Journal — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 17:11:36 -0400

One reason the Obama administration may have not alerted Congress 30 days in advance of the Sgt. Bowe Bergdal swap: It made the decision right before it took place.

"They knew a day ahead of time that the transfer was going to take place. They knew an hour ahead of time where it was going to take place," the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, told a small group of reporters Tuesday.

President Obama has said that the swap required quick action: "We had to act fast in a delicate situation that required no publicity," Obama said Friday on NBC Nightly News.

The administration has also argued that it put Congress "on notice" back in December 2013, via a signing statement from Obama relating specifically to a requirement that the administration notify Congress 30 days in advance of releasing any prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. Additionally, administration officials point out that they had previously briefed lawmakers on the idea of swapping these five Taliban leaders.

Durbin says it was "impossible" for the president to strike the deal and then wait 30 days, saying it could have "endangered the man's life" by waiting.

"So we have a provision in the law about 30-day notification which doesn't square with reality. Could he, could anyone have contacted Congress sooner? Perhaps," Durbin said. "But this notion of 30 days, I can't believe anybody's arguing, 'Well as soon as we knew there was a transfer we had to wait for Congress to think it over for 30 days.' That is not in the best interests."

But that argument doesn't satisfy everyone on Capitol Hill. A number of lawmakers, particularly Republicans, emerged from a closed Senate Armed Services Committee briefing Tuesday still critical of the administration's decision to make the swap without more of a heads-up to Congress.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said the 30-day notice issue is one outstanding problem for him. "I'm still troubled by whether the administration met the 30-day requirement and I'm digging into that further," he said.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin said administration officials presented some additional information that was not included in last week's all-senators closed briefing. On Tuesday, administration officials focused more on "the legal reason" for why the 30-day notice was not needed, namely pointing to Article II of the Constitution, which specifies the president's role as commander-in-chief.

Levin later said that officials knew of the detailed location "a few hours" before the swap and that the deal had come together in just "a matter of days."

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In Wake of Scandal, VA Nominees Stuck in Senate Limbo

Billy House and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 09:41:27 -0400

As the turmoil over the VA scandal unfolds, three top posts in the Department of Veterans Affairs remain vacant because of congressional foot-dragging toward full Senate confirmation.

A fourth key job—the department's inspector general—has remained vacant for nearly half a year. The White House itself has yet to even name a nominee for that post.

There is plenty of blame being tossed around.

The man with the power to set the agenda, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, pins it on Senate Republicans for holding up more than 140 nominations across several departments. He did so Tuesday when asked about the stalled nomination of Linda Schwartz to be assistant secretary for policy and planning at the VA.

Schwartz, who was nominated last August, was reported to the full Senate again in January, after initially being reported in November. As majority leader, Reid could put her nomination on the floor whenever he chooses. Instead, he pointed to the nominations of judges and ambassadors, some of which are subject to delays and holds by the GOP, when asked why he had not advanced the Schwartz nomination yet.

Reid himself suggested the delay is because of continued fallout from changing the Senate rules in November to clear nominations with only 51 votes, rather than 60.

"The Republicans are continuing their pout and we're unable to get the nominations done," Reid said. "I got a letter last April from the secretary of Defense to move these along. So we'll get to her just as quick as we can."

The question, Reid's spokesman Adam Jentleson suggested, is not why hasn't Reid acted, but why have Republicans forced Democrats to eat up time through the Senate's arcane process rules.

"Right now, Republicans have a blanket objection to moving virtually all nominees and forcing us to file cloture on everyone," he said in a statement.

Republicans say they have placed no official holds or otherwise had any hand in blocking or delaying full Senate confirmation votes on President Obama's picks for the other three positions.

Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Burr of North Carolina said he has no objection to Schwartz's nomination and said the delay was Reid's fault.

"Some weeks we do nothing but nominees," Burr said. "And some weeks we do nothing."

Schwartz, who continues to serve as the Connecticut state commissioner of veterans' affairs, expressed some clear antsy-ness.

"This position has been vacant since January of 2013, and I look forward to fulfilling the full intent of my nomination: assisting the VA in its mission of serving veterans and providing the secretary with solid and thoughtful counsel," Schwartz said.

She is herself a former Air Force flight nurse, who medically retired in 1986 after an aircraft accident. In her testimony to the Senate committee in November, she told lawmakers that her goals are "challenging the status quo" and assuring services worthy of veterans.

But that's just one nominee.

The other two nominees—Constance Tobias as chair of the Board of Veterans' Appeals, and Helen Tierney as the department's chief financial officer—are still waiting for the Veterans' Affairs Committee to report their nominations this session.

The timing is unclear, and a spokesman for Veterans' Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders of Vermont did not say when to expect them to head to the floor.

The president nominated Tierney in October, but she has yet to see even committee-level confirmation. Tierney, who currently heads the VA's office of management, could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Tobias, who currently chairs the departmental appeals board at the Department of Health and Human Services, also did not respond through a spokesman. Tobias was nominated for the VA post in January 2012.

Another nomination, that of Jeffrey Murawsky to be undersecretary for health, is also pending, but it was submitted only this week by the White House upon the resignation of Robert Petzel in the wake of the VA scandal. The VA Committee is still waiting on the necessary paperwork from the White House before scheduling a hearing for Murawsky, a Senate aide said.

The Senate has not delayed all VA nominees. Earlier this year, the committee forwarded Obama's nomination of Sloan Gibson to be the VA's deputy secretary, and the Senate has since confirmed him as the department's No. 2 officer. He became acting secretary upon Eric Shinseki's resignation last week.

But the other nominees await their day on the floor as the Senate continues to grapple with the fallout of the scandal over delayed and dishonest treatment of veterans at VA medical centers.

Later this week, Sanders will hold a hearing where he'll roll out legislation aimed at addressing the issues. Reid, offering a preview of the bill, said it will not be as broad as a reauthorization bill that failed earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Reid has put an offer on the table for Republicans to review: a vote on a slightly modified version of the bipartisan House-passed VA accountability bill, in exchange for a vote on the Sanders legislation.

Reid hadn't heard back from Republicans on the deal; his offers have not been well received by GOP senators lately, though.

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IRS Scandal, Defense Policy Bill on Tap for a Tense Week on Hill

Billy House and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Mon, 05 May 2014 09:50:59 -0400

The Senate may be heading for some tense moments this week as a proposal to approve the Keystone XL pipeline comes to the foreground and confirmation hearings begin for President Obama’s nominee to be the next Health and Human Services secretary.

Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Obama’s nominee to replace outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, will appear Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

The House, meanwhile, will hit friction of its own over a vote on whether to call upon Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service.

The House Rules Committee will lay out procedures Tuesday for a separate vote later in the week on a resolution to declare former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena, a move her lawyer has said would be “un-American.”

Majority Leader Eric Cantor says the vote to request special counsel stems from the Justice Department’s inaction on a referral by the Ways and Means Committee for criminal action against Lerner. But Rep. Sander Levin, the top Democrat on Ways and Means, described the move as part of the “GOP’s wild attempt from the get-go to tar the administration.”

Both votes have been set for Friday, and are scheduled under a floor procedure usually reserved for noncontroversial matters that requires approval by two-thirds of voting members for passage.

Here are some of the other items Congress will address this week:

The House Armed Services Committee is slated to unveil its full National Defense Authorization Act on Monday, and to vote on the legislation Wednesday.
The House Judiciary Regulatory Subcommittee will hold a hearing Thursday on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. The massive, $45 billion deal would combine the nation’s two largest cable providers, and company executives remain hopeful they can close the merger by the end of 2014.
The full House will vote this week on the Success and Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Act. Republicans say the bill would modernize charter schools by consolidating two federal programs into one, and permit states more flexibility to allocate federal funds.
State and Treasury officials will testify Thursday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Russian influence in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
The Senate will vote Monday on Nancy Moritz to be U.S. circuit judge for the 10th Circuit and Peter Selfridge to be chief of protocol, with the rank of ambassador.
The House Rules Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday to set floor-vote procedures on a bill to address the research and development tax credit for companies that do such research in the United States.

But it’s the Keystone XL pipeline that is likely to take center stage in the Senate as lawmakers prepare to debate the bipartisan energy-efficiency bill.

The Keystone bill is significant in part because it has become such a hot election-year issue. Republicans and many conservative Democrats view the legislation as a job creator and cast the administration’s delay of the pipeline as political. Meanwhile, many liberal Democrats oppose it on environmental grounds.

Backers of the current bill, which calls for approval of the pipeline, say they have 56 sponsors and are working behind the scenes to find the four additional lawmakers they’ll need to get it to the floor. The bill has the backing of the GOP conference as well as Democrats facing election in conservative states, including Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

Sponsored by Sens. John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, and Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, the bill would essentially rebuke the White House, which recently decided to delay the pipeline indefinitely.

HEALTH CARE

Burwell Round 1

Burwell, in addition to her appearance set for Thursday before the Senate HELP Committee, is to have a second confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee that is not yet scheduled.

Her confirmation was initially expected to be a difficult process, given the politicized nature of the HHS secretary position following the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

But a number of Republican senators have expressed their approval of Burwell’s nomination, and their support plus new Senate rules that require only a simple majority for confirmation mean her appointment is looking increasingly assured.

On Wednesday, current HHS officials will appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss the president’s fiscal 2015 budget proposal for the department. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, along with representatives from the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are to testify.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Authorization Revs Up

The House Armed Services Committee’s consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act, which started in subcommittee last week, marks the first steps toward the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget.

Among the key issues are decisions about the Pentagon’s proposed cuts to personnel benefits and plans to cut or retire certain weapons systems and platforms such as the A-10 attack aircraft and U-2 spy planes.

At the subcommittee level, the panel rejected most of the Defense Department’s proposed cuts in personnel benefits, including reductions in health care, housing, and commissary subsidies.

But Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the committee’s ranking member, has argued that some serious defense spending cuts are necessary. He is pushing colleagues to accept some of the weapons-systems cuts, arguing the military won’t be equipped for future threats if it is prevented from modernizing.

“The worst thing [lawmakers] can do is protect program after program after program … because the first thing to go in that scenario is readiness,” Smith said in a speech last week.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is working on assembling its version of the defense authorization bill behind the scenes; the goal is to make it public later this month. The committee plans to examine military compensation issues at a hearing Tuesday with Pentagon top brass.

Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees continue their scrutiny of the destabilization of Ukraine with the Senate panel holding a hearing on countering Russian intervention Tuesday and the House panel examining the depth of the crisis Thursday.

The Politics of Process Plague Senate Vets Bill

Stacy Kaper and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 10:02:00 -0500

Legislation to help veterans often wins bipartisan support, but a rift between Senate Democrats and Republicans over process—who gets to offer amendments and how many—is threatening an omnibus bill moving through the chamber.

Senate Republicans are emerging as skeptics of a Democratic bill sponsored by Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders of Vermont (I), arguing that an increasingly familiar script that has killed other bills may well repeat itself here.

Republican lawmakers describe a pattern in which Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., brings Democratic legislation to the floor and blocks the minority from offering amendments, and in response they block the measure from advancing to a simple-majority vote. The process has thus far stalled an extension of unemployment insurance.

“It’s pretty simple,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. “We don’t understand why the Senate shouldn’t function as it historically has functioned. The right of a single senator to offer amendments is pretty important. It’s a matter of principle as much as it is about any of the specific pieces of legislation.”

The Senate voted Tuesday to proceed to the Sanders bill, which would reverse an unpopular cut to veterans’ pensions that was enacted as part of the budget deal, as well as expand veterans’ education and health care benefits.

Republicans are wary of Sanders’s plan to expand benefits, and they’re furious over what they say is strong-arming by Reid.

“If Senator Reid were willing to run a legislative process, I think you can move bills,” said Republican Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who sits on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “It’s like this unemployment [legislation]. I always thought the votes were there. I just never could understand why he didn’t let the process go forward.”

Republicans blame election-year politics.

Grassley said Reid may be limiting amendments to protect vulnerable Democrats.

“This I can’t answer, it’s just a supposition, but to what extent does Senator Reid not want the senate to function because he wants to protect his majority?” Grassley said.

For his part, Reid has said that he will green-light GOP amendments that are related to the veterans bill, but at the same time made it clear that he will draw a line beyond which Republicans cannot cross. Exactly where that line is set remains to be seen.

“This doesn’t mean that we’ll go on forever,” Reid said.

Though 99 senators got on board for Tuesday’s vote to move the measure a small step forward, it’s unclear whether that support will continue on future, more substantive votes to pass the bill.

One of the Republican amendments is a plan to replace the measure with an alternative from Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Veterans’ Affairs panel’s top Republican.

The GOP plan would change how to pay for the expanded spending, which under the Sanders bill relies on savings from the drawdown of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans say those savings are “false,” arguing they don’t actually save taxpayers money. Instead, Republicans want to pay for it by targeting a child tax credit used by undocumented immigrants.

If Republicans don’t get to vote on their amendments, and if its spending offset isn’t changed, they’re threatening to block the measure—even if that position leaves them at odds with most veterans groups.

“It would be very difficult for people to vote against a veterans bill,” said Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. “But if they do it with the [war-drawdown funding] offset there might be some of us who vote against it, and I might be one of them.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took offense at the fact that Republicans were being blocked from amending such a massive bill for such a vital group. “I think I know as much about veterans as Mr. Sanders, with all due respect, yet I’m not allowed a single amendment to Mr. Sanders’s bill; that to me is an outrage and an insult,” he said.

Another Republican amendment would call for Iran sanctions, a sensitive area dividing some Democrats and the White House, which wants to see its diplomatic approach proceed.

Burr said that he could not abide a Democratic request that only amendments pertaining to veterans issues be offered.

“The chair made a plea that this be limited to VA issues,” Burr said. “That might be possible if the minority had the opportunity to amend legislation in this institution. It’s the only way we can get this to the floor because we’re denied any other attempt to do it.”

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Here's What's Happening After the Debt Ceiling: Nothing

Billy House and Michael Catalini, National Journal — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 10:26:00 -0500

The debt-ceiling bill passed by the House Tuesday, unburdened by additional Republican policy demands, appears headed for approval in the Senate, which would mark an end to major fiscal fights for the rest of the year.

With the debt limit raised, a budget passed, and the funds appropriated, Congress will have largely cleared its decks—though for what is still unclear.

As lawmakers head into Presidents Day recess, they have few big-ticket legislative aspirations this year, only a few accomplishments, and plenty of time to campaign.

“That’s what our leadership said—if we get past this one, we’re done until the election,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Kansas Republican. Indeed, for a collection of lawmakers who already have been criticized as one of the least productive in history, there seems to be little urgency to turn that notion around.

“We spent two years doing nothing,” said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, adding, “I don’t see a change of pace here. Lots of time off and nothing done.”

One House Democratic aide was even more blunt in assessing the coming months: “The rest is filler.”

Of course, there’s something on everyone’s list. Senate Democrats will pursue a host of issues, including a minimum-wage increase and an extension of federal unemployment insurance. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said earlier this month that House Republicans will finally advance a GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act. But the odds against those becoming law are long, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was hard-pressed to name other bills that are likely to pass this year. “There aren’t a lot,” he said.

Lawmakers still will have to approve another round of spending bills for the 2015 fiscal year. But whether they do, and whether those will be full-scale budget proposals or messaging tools, remains to be seen. Either way, it won’t be the heavy lifting seen in years past. The bipartisan budget deal has already set the level of government spending, which is one of the major flash points.

The rest is small-ball stuff: tax extenders, an energy-efficiency bill, and addressing how the government pays doctors under Medicare. That has some saying this is the true kickoff to campaign season.

House Democrats now head to their annual policy retreat for the rest of the week, and the full House will not return to Washington until Feb. 25.

Then, the calendar brings a St. Patrick’s Day break in March, a two-week Easter and Passover break in April, and yet more weeks off in May, June, and July. During the summer, lawmakers will be back in their districts the entire month of August and half of September. And in the fall, they will work just two days in Washington during October before heading into November’s election.

Of course, some lawmakers are loath to cede that the Capitol will turn solely to the midterms, at least right away. “My folks at home don’t care about November,” Huelskamp said. “They want solutions.”

Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said it’s too early to view everything through the electoral lens, noting that committee work continues. She recalled a Finance Committee bill to address tax extenders that lawmakers crafted during an election year. The bill got delayed until after November, but when members returned, much of the work had been done, she said.

“We need to not check out and start acting like the election is tomorrow,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat. “We’ve got a job to do. We need to be thinking about how to get things done even in a challenging environment.”

And part of that is finishing the debt-ceiling bill. There’s still a chance for some drama in the Senate, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas saying he will force Reid to get the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, a procedural move that likely would require five Republicans to cross the aisle to vote with Democrats.

The move suggests there is some division among Republicans. But several GOP senators said they expect that Republicans will not block the bill.

Rather, with the House passing a clean bill on the debt limit—which only months ago was heresy among conservatives—some GOP lawmakers are ceding a plain fact that Democrats have relished pointing out: They must win in the fall if they want to cut spending.

“I think if the recognition is that the Democrats simply will enact no additional fiscal discipline, let’s recognize that reality, agree not to filibuster, and say go ahead, pass an increase,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. “We can revisit this after the 2014 election.”

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Senate Democrats Warn Republicans Against Debt-Ceiling Wish List

Michael Catalini, National Journal — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 10:37:00 -0500

Senate Democrats are throwing rhetorical punches at Republicans over the debt ceiling, warning them not to demand spending cuts or other concessions. But this time, there’s no GOP opponent in the ring.

With Treasury predicting that the limit will have to be raised in coming days, Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray has made a mission of warning Republicans against mounting a fight. The Democrat from Washington state has issued statement after statement, written op-eds, sent letters to her colleagues, and led her party’s charge. She’s holding a hearing Tuesday focused on moving from crisis to crisis.

“The more time Republicans spend dreaming up their latest debt-limit wish list, the closer they are pushing workers and the economy toward another completely unnecessary crisis,” she said in a statement last week.

Yet, with the very real possibility of retaking the Senate in November, Republicans have not committed to making demands in exchange for increasing the $17 trillion debt limit. They have floated the possibility of changing the Affordable Care Act or green-lighting the Keystone XL pipeline as possible concessions, but they have articulated no plan to achieve those aims.

“Here’s the reality—and that is that we were badly burned by the shutdown of the government,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said. “If it hadn’t have been for Obamacare coming to the fore, it would have had even more impact. So Republicans are nervous about another showdown.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Budget Committee and a fiscal hawk who opposed the budget agreement, also doesn’t see a concrete concession emerging for Republicans.

“I don’t know that there’s a firm commitment on what steps we can take to improve our financial condition as part of any kind of debt ceiling increase,” Sessions said.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican, told Bloomberg recently that there would probably be enough Republicans to vote with Democrats on a clean debt-ceiling measure.

So, why are Senate Democrats—and Murray in particular—picking this fight?

For one, Democrats are skeptical of the apparent Republican thaw over the debt limit.

“The last thing we need to do with a fragile recovery is rattle sabers about debt ceilings and whether we’re going to extend the debt ceiling,” said Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. “We saw that that didn’t work last time.”

Democrats have good reason to be skeptical. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called for attaching a spending cut to the debt limit, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said a clean debt ceiling couldn’t pass the House. Said Murray: “The American people are sick and tired of Republicans playing games with our economic recovery, and Democrats have made it clear that Republicans don’t get to demand a ransom simply for allowing Congress to do its job.”

Democrats are mindful of what a united GOP front in both chambers can achieve.

In 2011, conservatives won the Budget Control Act, which resulted in across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, a devastating blow for Democrats.

Since then, however, Republicans have split over funding for Obamacare, which led to the government shutdown and debt-ceiling fights late last year. Senate Democrats came to view their approach—an outright refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling—as a clear political and policy winner, a wedge to divide the GOP, and some Republicans give that calculus credibility.

“Our constituents expect us to rein in spending to the point where obviously we don’t have to keep raising the debt limit,” McCain said. “But there’s not the appetite for a showdown that there was before the government shutdown.”

Although Republicans have hardly been breathing fire over the debt ceiling, Senate Democrats are likely to wait until Boehner and GOP leaders unveil their plans before acting, according to one senior aide.

And there are decisions to be made, beyond any talk of concessions. For example, lawmakers will have to work out the length of the debt-limit extension. Democrats want to extend the limit for as long as possible, the aide said, suggesting one or two years. Republicans are apt to want a shorter extension.

Indeed, Republicans have not always put up a vigorous fight over the debt limit.

They ceded a three-month extension early last year in exchange for the No Budget No Pay Act, which called on lawmakers to forfeit their pay if a budget were not passed. It was an easy pill for Democrats to swallow because they intended to pass a budget.

After the shutdown, both chambers hashed out a two-year budget compromise and quickly passed an omnibus appropriations bill that conformed to the spending levels in the measure, prompting Democrats to question what more Republicans might want to achieve.

“Hopefully Republicans will stop worrying about keeping the tea party happy and will work with us to prevent a default the way they’ve done the last two times,” Murray said, “but this time without the drama and needless uncertainty.”

This article appears in the February 4, 2014, edition of NJ Daily as Why Dems Are Shadowboxing On the Debt Limit.

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Crusader Against Government Waste Cuts Senate Career Short

Michael Catalini and Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 09:07:42 -0500

Sen. Tom Coburn announced Thursday night that he will be resigning his seat at the end of the year as he battles a recurrence of cancer.

"Serving as Oklahoma's senator has been, and continues to be, one of the great privileges and blessings of my life. But, after much prayer and consideration, I have decided that I will leave my Senate seat at the end of this Congress," Coburn wrote in a statement.

"As a citizen, I am now convinced that I can best serve my own children and grandchildren by shifting my focus elsewhere. In the meantime, I look forward to finishing this year strong. I intend to continue our fight for Oklahoma, and will do everything in my power to force the Senate to re-embrace its heritage of debate, deliberation, and consensus as we face our many challenges ahead."

Coburn was first elected to Congress in 1994 as part of a wave of House conservative firebrands swept into office as part of that year's GOP landslide. Like many of his freshman colleagues, he pledged to serve only three terms. Unlike most of his colleagues, he kept his word.

He returned to Washington as a senator in 2004, handily defeating two prominent Republicans for the nomination and a highly touted Democratic congressman who succeeded him in the House. During the campaign, he portrayed himself as a part-time lawmaker, saying he was willing to put his conservative principles ahead of his party.

In the Senate, he was a crusader against wasteful spending. Before opposition to earmarking became a cause celebre with conservatives, he vowed not to seek earmarks early on in his Senate career. He tried to remove $5.5 billion in what he deemed wasteful projects from the 2009 stimulus bill and was an outspoken critic against the president's health care law.

Coburn, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, also assembles an annual government "Wastebook," a compilation of government expenditures he views as wasteful. The 2013 edition identified $30 billion in program expenditures, including nearly $1 million to "explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and Internet fan fiction."

But Coburn has been an unflinching advocate of his views, even in the face of conservative backlash.

Over the summer, when Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah advocated a strategy of defunding Obamacare even if that meant shuttering the government, Coburn criticized the approach as unrealistic and unlikely to succeed. During the early stages of the so-called defund Obamacare debate, Coburn sat, legs crossed, at his Senate desk listening intently to Cruz and Lee as they argued it would be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who would shut down the government, not them.

Coburn disagreed emphatically, calling the tactic disingenuous and saying it was doomed to fail. Politically, Coburn's remarks turned out to be prescient, and the shutdown badly bruised Republicans in Congress. Even as the behind-the-scenes Republican squabbling spilled onto center stage, Coburn kept to his small-government principles. He still voted against the continuing resolution that reopened government, arguing against running the government in such a ham-fisted manner.

Last year, he also gained attention for his willingness to negotiate with Democrats on new gun-control measures in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But he was unable to reach an agreement with Democrats, and the legislation never passed.

This is not Coburn's first battle with cancer. In 2011, he underwent surgery for prostate cancer and was treated for colon cancer earlier in his career. In his statement, he attributed his resignation to his commitment to serve only two terms.

"I believe it's important to live under the laws I helped write, and even those I fought hard to block," Coburn said.

Coburn's resignation means there will be a special election held next year to fill out the remainder of his term. Republicans are heavily favored to hold onto his seat in a deeply conservative state. Oklahoma is also one of several states that prohibits governors from appointing a placeholder senator, so there will be a vacancy after his resignation until the special election is held.

Coburn missed Thursday's vote on the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. His colleagues praised him for his incorruptible style and voting record.

"TomCoburn: without question one of the most intelligent, principled, and decent men in modern Senate history," said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's spokesman in a tweet.

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Senators Eye Changes to Military Pension Provision in Budget Deal

Michael Catalini and Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 09:15:59 -0500

Though the Senate is poised to pass the Bipartisan Budget Act on Wednesday, lawmakers in both parties are already working to alter some of its provisions in the weeks and months ahead.

The measure is expected to pass handily, sending a bill to President Obama's desk that will reduce sequestration cuts by $63 billion and fund the government through Sept. 30, 2015. But that has not stopped lawmakers from making preparations to tinker with it after it passes, most notably with a provision reducing military pensions.

"Nothing is written in stone around here," said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is a budget. A budget could be amended next year."

Levin said Tuesday that his committee will look into nixing the cuts to military pensions before they take effect in 2016. Under the budget agreement, military retirees under the age of 62 will see reductions in cost-of-living adjustments, but the committee could alter or eliminate that change, Levin said.

Republicans and Democrats in both chambers mentioned concerns about the pension provision when Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan announced the budget deal last week. But Levin's commitment to a review eased some of that tension. Republican Sens. Rob Portman and John McCain both said that the possibility of changing the provision played a role in their decision to vote to bring the budget deal to the floor.

"That gives some of us some comfort," Portman said.

But apparently not every senator felt comforted. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., called a vote Wednesday evening that would have allowed Republicans to add an amendment to the budget deal eliminating the military-pensions provision. The measure failed, predictably, on a nearly party-line vote in which only Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., broke with her caucus to support the measure.

Sessions said that he pushed for the vote as a protest of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to fill the amendment tree on the budget bill, preventing Republicans from filing amendments of their own. The vote also forced Democrats who have said they are sympathetic to veterans facing pension cuts to choose between getting rid of those cuts and siding with their leadership.

With the 46-54 vote, any changes to military pensions will likely be pushed into the New Year when the Senate Armed Services Committee takes up the measure. Levin and McCain cautioned Tuesday that the pension changes may not disappear. "I can't promise that we will repeal it," McCain said. But even Ryan, who worked the pension measure into the final budget deal over Democratic objections, has said that he is open to making changes.

"We delayed this provision so that it doesn't take effect until the year 2016, which gives Congress and the military community time to address the broader compensation issue, including this provision, if people believe there's a better way to solve this problem," Ryan told The Weekly Standard.

The budget bill cleared its biggest hurdle on Tuesday, when the Senate invoked cloture on a 67-33 vote, setting up final passage for Wednesday. A dozen Republicans joined Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold, which was the last chance Senate Republicans had to derail the budget agreement.

A simple majority is needed to pass the measure Wednesday, and it is likely to hit that target easily. All 53 Democratic senators and the two independents who caucus with them support the bill, and some Republicans like Portman have agreed also signed on.

But the budget deal isn't set in stone, and with the specter of another government shutdown effectively off the table, even senators who supported the deal are talking about making changes when Congress returns in January.

Many Democrats cite concerns that the final deal did not include an extension of unemployment-insurance benefits, which expire shortly after Christmas. Reid has said the Senate will take up the issue after the holidays.

Murray acknowledged before Tuesday's vote that not everyone got what they wanted in the final deal. "This deal is a compromise, and it doesn't tackle every one of the challenges we face as a nation. But that was never our goal," she said on the Senate floor. "This bipartisan bill takes the first steps toward rebuilding our broken budget process. And, hopefully, toward rebuilding our broken Congress."

But with lawmakers already plotting to alter some of the provisions that allowed the compromise in the first place, that first step may be on shaky ground. Levin conceded Tuesday that changes to certain aspects of the budget bill could open up a Pandora's box, allowing Congress to re-litigate the entire deal when it returns in January. But the Michigan Democrat said that he wasn't too concerned.

"It's not—you know, there's nothing here that's permanent," he said.

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Appropriators Will Work Through the Holidays to Avoid a Shutdown

Michael Catalini and Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 10:23:21 -0500

While much of Capitol Hill is getting ready for the holiday break, those who work on the Appropriations committees have a different vision for the days ahead -- and it ain’t sugar plums.

The Senate is expected to pass the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 early this week, but the real work of funding the government is just getting started, as congressional appropriators and their staff plan to work through the holidays to avoid another government shutdown.

Appropriators are signaling that they will complete a 12-bill omnibus package for the remainder of fiscal 2014 by Jan. 15.

“We will meet that deadline,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski said. “It’s gonna be tough. It’s gonna be stringent. But we will get that job done.”

Appropriators are aiming high. Both Mikulski and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers have committed to drafting a dozen separate appropriations bills that will figure into omnibus legislation covering the remainder of the fiscal year. Appropriators are hopeful that they can pass the omnibus through both chambers before the current funding mechanism expires in January.

“I hope it’s a bus that really moves,” Mikulski, D-Md., joked on the Senate floor.

At worst, appropriations staffers say, they would push a very short-term continuing resolution—potentially as short as 36 hours—to give the committees more time to draft bills.

Conversations between members of the Appropriations committees have been ongoing but began in earnest last week after the House passed the Ryan-Murray budget agreement, which set top-line numbers for fiscal 2014.

But the agreement did not set spending figures for the individual subcommittees. Mikulski and Rogers, R-Ky., will have to agree to those numbers before their subcommittee chairs can get to work. Though the two chairs have met to discuss the appropriations process, they are unlikely to come to an agreement on spending levels before the Senate officially passes the budget bill, which is expected on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The appropriations for Defense and Homeland Security are expected to be completed with relative ease, with few disagreements between members of both parties on the overall spending for each.

In fact, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said that he began meeting with his House counterpart, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, on Thursday. “We think we know if the Murray-Ryan agreement goes through what our budget number is going to be,” Durbin said. “We’ve already started working to get 60 percent of the discretionary spending taken care of in our appropriation bill. That’s how quickly we can move once this agreement becomes the law.”

The real difficulties will come as both chambers get to work on funding bills for Interior and Environment and for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, where Democrats and Republicans are much further apart on spending levels. Negotiations over the Labor-Health appropriations haven’t begun yet, a Senate Democratic aide said.

While the formal process of drafting bills cannot begin until the Senate passes the budget agreement, staffers have already begun identifying sticking points that will have to be ironed out before lawmakers return in January. The process is “not very far along” at the moment, according to one staffer, meaning that a lot of the heavy lifting will have to be done during the holiday recess.

With the House already out for the holidays, and the Senate planning to leave at the end of this week, most of the appropriations process will be carried out by staff. Staff members have been advised to stick around over the holidays, while lawmakers will primarily participate over the phone, as they prepare legislation for Congress to consider when both houses return in early January.

“It’s doable. We’ve done it before.... It’s not to say that it won’t be very, very difficult,” one House Republican staffer said of the Jan. 15 deadline.

The hope is that staffers will not have to work on Christmas Day itself, but both the House and Senate committees will likely be working up to Dec. 25 and through New Year’s Day.

“Better in the holiday season than not at all,” said one House Democratic staffer.

Though the House passed only five of the 12 bills—and the Senate passed none—in 2013, the Bipartisan Budget Act has appropriators cautiously optimistic about keeping the government open.

“We’ll work with whatever the number is,” said Senate Appropriations ranking member Richard Shelby of Alabama. “I’ve always said if we had a number, we ought to go by the number.”

Lawmakers, especially Republicans, acknowledge that the appropriations process is paramount to avoiding another shutdown.

Call it crisis fatigue. Lawmakers, even those who have consistently voted to reject compromise legislation, are beginning to embrace the budget deal and signal support for regular appropriations bills, too.

“Funding the federal government through successive continuing resolutions is a bad idea that only results in greater inefficiencies, waste, and economic uncertainty,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican. “It is a practice that should end.”

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Forecast for Passing Two-Year Budget Deal is Sunny in the Senate

Michael Catalini and Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 09:30:16 -0500

With the budget drama heading into its final act in the Senate on Tuesday, tensions surrounding the fate of the two-year deal are dissipating, with Republicans signaling they will not block the measure.

Leery of saying how they would vote before the House overwhelmingly approved the deal on Thursday, Senate Republicans opened up on Friday. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona said they would vote for cloture, and others indicated they're considering it.

Despite the reluctance of some members to say how they would vote, the mood among senators on Friday bordered on upbeat.

"I think it represents a sincere effort to compromise, move us forward, and end this lurching from crisis to crisis that has been so damaging to the economy and to people's confidence in government," said Collins, who is also likely to vote yes on the legislation.

Even Republicans who oppose the deal brokered by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray predict the compromise budget would make appropriating easier.

"We'll work with whatever the number is," said Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "I've always said if we had a number, we ought to go by the number, and if we get the number -- and I think we will, who knows? -- I believe the appropriations process will start working."

While Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., opposes the budget because it exceeds the caps set by the Budget Control Act -- the best vote he ever took in the Senate, he said -- he's considering voting for cloture and suggested he's fed up with the importance with which cloture votes are now treated. Outside groups, particularly conservative organizations, have begun to score even the procedural votes.

"Always the deciding factor was how you voted on the piece of legislation, not whether you voted to end debate or not end debate," Corker said. "So I'm thinking: Is it time to end this debate on this issue?"

Corker said he thinks the Senate will move beyond the procedural hurdle, which is expected to come up Tuesday.

McCain, as well as a number of other Republicans, reasoned that defeating the legislation would be tantamount to paving the way for another shutdown, which proved politically disastrous for the GOP in October.

"I'm not OK with it," he said. "But I think it's better than shutting down the government."

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who faces a primary challenge from conservative state Sen. Chris McDaniel next year, said he is still weighing his options on both the cloture vote and the underlying bill. Cochran brushed off questions about whether his challenge from McDaniel, who has the support of several conservative outside groups, is a factor in his decision-making.

Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who is retiring at the end of next year, is considering his options, but said that he is considering voting for cloture while opposing the overall bill. "I'm very concerned about the package, but I can also see the merits of a two-year deal," he said Friday. "So I want the weekend to think about it and I'll make a decision."

But Johanns and several other Republican senators predicted that the bill will pass easily, arguing that lawmakers are wary of entering the holidays with the specter of another government shutdown in January hanging over their heads.

"It's not sufficient to say we'll let the government shut down. We've seen how that works. People hate that.… And so I think at the end of the day if you believe in my crystal ball, this gets the votes," Johanns said.

The bill looks to have the backing of the vast majority of Democrats as well. Even Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who frequently breaks with his party, was vocal in his support for the deal Friday, shouting to crowded reporters: "I'm all for it! I'm all for it!"

Red-state Democrats who are up for reelection next year also seem largely in favor of the bill. Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Begich of Alaska said Friday that they would support the measure. But Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. -- likely the most vulnerable senator on the 2014 electoral map -- is still weighing his options. His Club for Growth-backed challenger, GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, voted against the bill Thursday.

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Holiday Miracle? Congress on Verge of Passing Budget

Michael Catalini, Sarah Mimms, and Tim Alberta, National Journal — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 10:04:29 -0500

Barring a meltdown in the Senate next week -- which remains a possibility -- Congress is on the verge of making a little modern history with House passage Thursday night of a two-year budget bill that would fund the government until October 2015.

The 332-94 vote may bode well for passage in the Senate, which is expected but not assured due to Republican concerns about busting the spending caps in the Budget Control Act and a provision that would reduce retirement benefits for members of the military.

If those concerns are overcome and the Senate can muster 60 votes to move to the bill, it will mark the first time since 1997 that Congress has passed a complete budget.

To do that, Senate Democrats will need five Republicans to join them in voting for cloture next week to get the bill to the floor. They are expected to get them, though many Republican senators are staying mum about whether they will back the budget deal crafted by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan.

A number of Senate Republicans said that they were waiting to see the vote margin in the House before making a determination. The overwhelming House vote Thursday should help push some of those Senate GOP votes into the "yes" column.

Senate Democratic vote-counters have begun preliminary checks and expect the legislation to pass with enough Republicans voting for cloture, according to a Senate Democratic aide. The cloture vote could come as early as Monday, with a final vote on the bill Tuesday.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine could be among the Republicans to support the measure. Both said that they were still making a decision about whether to vote in favor of the bill, but indicated that they would like to pass a budget.

"I don't like lots of pieces of what I'm seeing in this budget," Murkowski said Thursday. "But I think I'm at that point where to have an agreement, even though it may be imperfect, may be better than having no agreement at all."

Depending on the number of Republicans who vote for cloture, the Senate aide said, some Democrats may vote against ending debate because the legislation will not contain an extension of unemployment insurance, which is set to expire Dec. 28.

In the House Thursday night, an overwhelming majority of House Republicans lined up behind their leaders to approve the budget plan that has infuriated the party's conservative base. The bill passed with 169 Republicans and 163 Democrats voting in favor.

"It was much higher than I expected; I was very pleasantly surprised," Ryan said of the vote. "I think people are hungry to do things around here.... I got so many of my colleagues saying thank you for bringing some normalcy back to this place. I'm very pleased about that."

But the agreement received some opposition from both parties, with 62 Republicans and 32 Democrats opposing it. Democrats complained that the measure does not extend unemployment benefits, and Republicans cited concerns about easing the sequestration cuts while raising revenues. Several major conservative groups came out against the measure, but the opposition had little impact.

One fascinating aspect of the vote was an unusual split among the House's most conservative members.

Of the five-member "Jedi Council" group that worked to bridge the gap earlier this year between House Speaker John Boehner and House conservatives, three voted for the budget proposal and two voted against.

Reps. Tom Price of Georgia and Jeb Hensarling of Texas, both former chairmen of the Republican Study Committee, joined Ryan in approving the measure. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and current RSC Chairman Steve Scalise of Louisiana opposed the deal.

Scalise had been undecided on the proposal since its unveiling and refused to comment on which way he was leaning before the vote. But after he fired the RSC's longtime executive director, Paul Teller, on Wednesday -- a move that was heavily criticized by outside groups -- Scalise would have endured even more right-wing opposition had he voted in favor of the deal.

One of the biggest surprises of the night came when Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia, a leading House conservative who was the architect of the House GOP's strategy to defund Obamacare, voted for the budget compromise. Graves, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, had previously expressed a desire to return to "regular order" in which appropriators write spending bills. Graves was greeted with a hearty round of handshakes from his colleagues after registering his vote.

Elsewhere, some other popular House conservatives who were previously undecided wound up splitting on the vote. Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona, who sports a perfect 100 percent on Heritage Action's legislative scorecard, kept his perfection intact by opposing the measure. On the flip side, Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, viewed as a potential successor to Scalise at the RSC, voted in favor of the budget deal.

On the other side of the aisle, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer was the only member of Democratic leadership to oppose the measure, citing both the lack of an extension for unemployment insurance and the fact that the bill did not replace all of the sequestration cuts. "The deal before us today does not deal with the fundamental issue of long-term fiscal stability," Hoyer said on the House floor before the vote.

Hoyer was joined by Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee and a vocal supporter for the unemployment-insurance extension, in opposing the measure.

On his final night of votes in the House, Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., also opposed the measure. Watt was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. A cadre of Democrats, including Hoyer and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, gathered on the House floor following the vote to bid Watt farewell.

The measure represents a small deal hashed out over months by Ryan and Murray, and it leaves many of the big questions about future spending -- including entitlement and tax reform -- for another day.

The House-passed budget bill sets top-line funding levels at $1.012 trillion for fiscal year 2014 and $1.014 trillion for fiscal year 2015, while providing $63 billion in sequester relief over two years, paid for through a combination of fees and mandatory savings. The deal will also reduce the deficit by $28 billion over the next 10 years, Ryan said.

The bill includes an amendment that will extend the "doc fix" formula, which is used to reimburse doctors under Medicare, for three months, while congressional negotiators continue to haggle over a long-term solution.

The House has no remaining votes before members head home for the holidays. Though the Senate will remain in session next week, the House will return on Jan. 7.

Billy House and Elahe Izadi contributed to this article.

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Republican Senators Say Budget Will Pass

Michael Catalini, National Journal — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 10:40:07 -0500

Senate Republicans by and large do not like the budget agreement very much, but despite their concerns, they expect it to pass both chambers and head to the president's desk, according to members and Senate aides.

The sticking point for members is that the agreement, brokered by budget cochairs Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, lifts the spending caps set in the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, who this week got a high-profile primary challenger in Rep. Steve Stockman, said he's inclined to vote against the agreement. "I'm disappointed that some people are apparently willing to give up the spending caps for just more spending and no entitlement reform," Cornyn said. "That was always the deal most of us hoped for."

While they worry about the spending increases, members acknowledge that the bipartisan agreement, embraced by John Boehner and Harry Reid, gives Congress a chance to avoid another government shutdown.

"I don't think anybody on either side wants a government shutdown," said Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., who acknowledged that having a top-line spending figure, which the agreement will set for Congress, will make appropriating easier.

The conference is wary of torpedoing a deal before the House votes, in part, out of respect for Ryan, who's earned a sterling reputation among conservatives.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi hasn't decided whether he'll support the deal, but said he expects it to pass. "I know the position the speaker and Mr. Ryan have been placed in and so it takes two to tango," he said.

But, GOP Senate aides said, lawmakers realize it's politically dangerous to risk sabotaging the deal that avoids a shutdown.

"We'll see what the House does," said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, who chairs the Republican Policy Committee. "I don't like the fact that it busts through the caps. At first blush, I don't support it."

Since the legislation is expected to come to the Senate as a bill, it will be subject to a filibuster, which means that barring any Democratic defections, Reid will need five Republicans to get cloture. Depending on the issue, a cohort of Republicans tends to coalesce to vote with Democrats on cloture, even if they go on to vote against the underlying legislation.

One member who's usually in that group is Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who, according to her office, has yet to announce her view on the deal. But on Tuesday, Collins did not rule out the idea of breaking the caps to provide relief from sequestration.

"I'm open to the concept of substituting some reforms in mandatory spending in order to ease the impact of sequestration, particularly on the Defense Department," Collins said shortly before the agreement was announced. "But really I've got to wait to see what the details are."

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How Senate Republicans Can Retaliate on the Filibuster

Michael Catalini and Elahe Izadi, National Journal — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 10:32:40 -0500

If you're looking for a coordinated Senate Republican tactical response to Harry Reid's nuclear detonation, you're not likely to find it any time soon.

Republicans have no proportional counterattacks now that the majority leader has scorched the filibuster on nominees. But that doesn't mean they don't have any means to strike back.

There are plenty of procedural tools GOP senators can use to extract smaller wins or inflict some pain on Democrats in the interim, but ultimately the best way for the minority to retaliate is to win a majority in 2014, say Capitol Hill strategists and advisers.

The Senate's reliance on unanimous consent to pass many bills provides Senate Republicans with a powerful lever to pull. UC is often used to move noncontroversial bills quickly through the upper chamber. Some Republicans say that's not likely to happen as often now. "There will be no UCs," suggested a former senior GOP aide. "You won't be able to get a UC to go to the bathroom."

Already, conservatives outside the Capitol are urging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to exercise this option. Red State, the influential conservative website, called on Republicans to withhold consent on every issue that comes before the Senate.

But there are downsides—namely, that withholding consent plays into Reid's efforts to paint Republicans as obstructionists. So if torpedoing all UC requests gives Senate Democrats an advantage, there's little incentive to pursue that course, argue some Republicans. Plus, the Republican-controlled House ensures nothing unpalatable will get through.

"Senate Republicans don't have to jam up the system," said GOP strategist Rick Wilson. "They don't have to play screw around because the House plays a buffer."

Other influential conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh, have suggested stigmatizing the nominees confirmed in the post-nuclear-option Senate, giving them an air of illegitimacy.

But there's little indication on the Hill—at least, so far—that Republican senators will adopt this approach. A senior Senate GOP aide said there has been no effort to mount a conference-wide response and doesn't expect one for now.

The more likely strategy, say former Senate aides, would be for McConnell to pick which bills and nominations to hold up, with the intention of extracting some cost from Reid.

"If Harry Reid is trying to push something through at the end of a session, then now you really have it," said Mark Strand, president of the Congressional Institute and a former top aide to former Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo. "You punish him for something he really wants."

As for whether that approach plays into Reid's aim of casting Republicans as obstructionists, Strand pushed back. "Really you're trying to create a give-and-take," he said. "In exchange for what you want, here's what we want."

Plus, that whole obstructionist narrative is "already baked in the cake," said Wilson. "It's hard for people to hate Congress any more than they already do. It's hard for people to say, 'Goddamn those Republicans,' more thoroughly than they already have."

Go too far, and Republicans fear they could be even further marginalized as the minority party in the upper chamber. From their point of view, Republicans believe Reid has demonstrated his willingness to do whatever it takes to score victories for Democrats and the White House.

"Right now, there's no incentive for the White House to negotiate with us because Reid will change the rules," a former GOP leadership aide said.

Whether Reid would actually revisit the nuclear option on legislation, though, seems unlikely. Getting the votes to strip the filibuster threat from nominees was difficult enough, and Reid said in an interview with WAMU this week that he'd leave the decision to future majority leaders to decide whether to expand simple-majority rule in the Senate.

Democrats, for their part, aren't yet sure how Republicans will strike back in the next year. "People assume they're going to make us burn all the time on debating nominees. As far as how their frustration will manifest itself on the legislative calendar, we don't know yet," said a Democratic leadership aide. "The ball is in their court."

What it all really comes down to is control of the Senate. Republicans acknowledge the only way to get that is to prevail against the vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2014. Messaging over procedural rules really isn't going to work in a place like Louisiana, Arkansas, or Alaska. And given that Reid "reigns supreme" in the Senate, "literally the only strategy available to Republicans is to win in 2014," said a Senate GOP aide.

If that happens, all bets are off. McConnell declined to lay out his plan of attack after Reid changed the rules. But Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, gave some indication on the Senate floor last week.

Grassley said the "silver lining" of the change is that Republicans will one day be in the majority, and they "will likely" nominate and confirm both lower court and Supreme Court nominees with 51 votes. The Senate changes last week still left the filibuster intact on nominees for the highest court in the land.

"There will come a day when we will have the Senate," Wilson said, "and our vengeance will be hideous to behold."

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In the Aftermath of a Post-Nuclear Senate, Everyone’s Dug in Deeper

Michael Catalini and Elahe Izadi, National Journal — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 09:53:34 -0500

The sun had not set on the post-nuclear Senate, when Democrats began looking forward to confirming a slate of White House nominees as Republicans dished out doomsday forecasts on the future of the institution.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., invoked the rules change—first dubbed the "nuclear option" and later called the "Reid Rule"—and began a process in which executive and judicial nominees, though not Supreme Court justices, could be confirmed via a simple, 51-vote majority.

The upper chamber is on track to confirm Patricia Millett to the U.S. Court of Appeals-D.C. Circuit after Thanksgiving recess, and the White House has submitted a slate of other nominees to other posts. But when it comes to budget deals and other legislation—particularly bills that need 60 votes to pass—the rules change hasn't done much to create a bipartisan atmosphere.

"It puts a chill on the entire United States Senate," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "It puts a chill on everything that requires bipartisanship."

McCain, who reached a deal to thwart a rules change back in the summer, now says it's "too late" to forge an agreement to go back. He had been working for two weeks to avert what happened Thursday, including an hour-long meeting in Reid's office Wednesday night.

"I've reached [out] until my arm aches, OK?" McCain said. "They are governed by these hard-over, newer members of the Democratic caucus who have never been in the minority, who are primarily driving this issue and they succeeded. And they will pay a very, very heavy price for it."

And what could that price be? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., isn't laying out a play-by-play on how Republicans will bite back. "I don't think this is a time to be talking about reprisal. I think it is a time to be sad about what's been done to the United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world."

Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, warned that judicial nominees would become more and more partisan because, "the party in power is going to be pushed by base votes," he said. "The political nature of who you pick changes because you are not going to have to accommodate anybody on the other side."

Indeed, the Senate Democrats who were most vocal in support of the rules change did include a cadre of newer members who haven't served in the minority. Their arguments in favor of the change took hold this week, particularly as some of their weary, more experienced colleagues felt they had no other options.

"I feel like we've been forced into it, and I think it's terribly unfortunate," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said. "You can't decide you want to remove judges from a circuit without getting a law passed to reduce the number of judges on that circuit. You don't get to block nominees in order to effect legislative policy, and that's what they're trying to do."

A number of Democrats are thrilled that, as they put it, the fever has been broken and they can move on to confirm judges that hadn't been blocked because of their qualifications, but because Republicans objected to Obama filling the court with his choices. "I'm not afraid of democracy," said retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

"Not uneasy at all. Happy about it," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. "I've been supportive of it for a long time. It took us awhile to get the whole caucus there. I am thrilled to get the Senate back to work."

Republicans have argued that the rules change was a distraction, designed to remove the focus on the problems associated with the rollout of Obamacare. Landrieu, who faces a tough reelection fight back home, countered that the rules change had nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.

"It had to do with the fact that the Senate has been at a dead standstill and there are a handful of senators led by Ted Cruz, supported by Mitch McConnell, and flamed on by David Vitter, that think they own this floor and they don't," she said. "The American people do and we're going to get back to their business."

Reid's changing of the rules basically delivered on something many Republicans say they've been expecting. Very "matter of fact," was how Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., put it. "This is something that everybody thought would come, they just didn't know when."

"We were all tired of being threatened by it," said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Other lawmakers tried to find a way out. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had dinner Monday night with a group of senators who convened during the shutdown, to come up with a short-term compromise.

"It was very shortsighted of the Democrats to force this. There was a group of us working to try to come up with some sort of compromise and I think it's unfortunate that we were not given the time to try to come up with something that might have produced a different ending," Collins said.

Democrats, particularly the more apprehensive ones, were acutely aware of how their votes on Thursday could come back to haunt them. "If you've been around awhile, I think you worry about everything—including the sun coming up—coming back to haunt you," McCaskill said. "There's nothing I do that I don't worry about."

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