Government Executive - Authors - Sarah Mimms

McConnell’s Surprise Move on War Authority

Sarah Mimms and Alex Rogers, National Journal — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 15:54:58 -0500

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered members a snow-weekend surprise late Wednesday night: Quietly teeing up a debate on the legal underpinning for the fight against ISIS.

After months of worrying that such a resolution—known as an authorization for the use of military force—would tie the next president’s hands, McConnell’s move to fast-track the measure surprised even his top deputy, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who was unaware that McConnell had set up the authorization.

“He did?” Cornyn asked National Journal on Thursday morning.

The AUMF put forward by McConnell would not restrict the president’s use of ground troops, nor have any limits related to time or geography. Nor would it touch on the issue of what to do with the 2001 AUMF, which the Obama administration has used to attack ISIS despite that authorization’s instructions to use force against those who planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks. By contrast, the legal authority put forward by the administration last February wouldn’t authorize “enduring offensive ground combat operations” and would have ended three years after enactment, unless reauthorized.

After sitting on the president’s proposed AUMF for nearly a year, amid deep infighting in the Senate over the measure, McConnell’s move came as a surprise to many members. Just in December, McConnell dismissed the idea of bringing up a new authorization, telling reporters: “It’s clear the president does not have a strategy in place, so it would be hard to figure out how to authorize a non-strategy.”

Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, said Thursday in an email that the new AUMF “is not the one the [p]resident asked for” and “not one that would tie the [p]resident’s hands.”

Stewart added that the process McConnell used to set up the AUMF, known as “Rule XIV,” merely sets up the authorization for a future vote, but does not put it on the calendar—meaning a vote could come at any time, or not at all. The resolution already has four Republican cosponsors: Sens. Lindsey Graham, Daniel Coats, Joni Ernst, and Orrin Hatch.

That came as news to many members Thursday. Several senators said they were unaware that McConnell had moved to fast-track an authorization and some Republicans immediately pointed out issues with the proposal. Sen. Jeff Flake, who introduced a more limited AUMF with Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine last June, said: “We need to pass one—we don’t need to just make a political statement.”

“I just know that it’ll be difficult to get Democratic support on this,” he added.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker said that there is still a “wide diversity” of opinions on the issue. Some Democrats were critical of even the president’s own draft AUMF, warning that they’d need additional restrictions from the administration on troop levels and geographic boundaries before they could support any authorization. Republicans, meanwhile, worried deeply about restricting the president as this administration, and the next one, work to combat ISIS.

Corker’s committee—and the Senate at large—was so deeply divided over the president’s AUMF proposal in February that the panel ultimately dropped the issue, with Corker arguing with the administration that no new authorization was needed. “I don’t think it changes anything,” he said, of the new resolution.

“I’m in the same place that I’ve been—and that is I believe the administration has the authority to do what they’re doing,” he added. “They believe they have the authority to do what they’re doing. If a consensus develops and I believe that something constructive relative to us dealing with ISIS might come out of it then certainly I’d be glad to consider it.”

Still, several long-time advocates for passing a new measure authorizing the administration’s war against ISIS were pleased to see an AUMF moving, however slightly, forward.

“This is the right thing,” said Graham, a cosponsor on the new AUMF resolution. “This is the right infrastructure to have.”

“If our Democratic friends don’t want to give this president and other presidents the ability to go after ISIS without limitation to geography, time and means—be on the record,” he added.

Kaine, a Democrat who has aggressively advocated for an AUMF, was thrilled Thursday that the Senate could soon take up debate, though he added that he hasn’t yet seen the details. “After 18 months, I feel like the institution might be finally waking up that this is a threat,” Kaine said. “So we’ll see what the plan is on it, but the notion that we may be finally taking our job seriously on it is something I’m hopeful about.”

Kaine said that although he and the vast majority of Congress support combatting ISIS, he disagrees with the administration that the president is within his authority to do so. “I believe the war is illegal,” Kaine said Thursday. “I don’t think there’s a legal justification for it. And I think the greatest danger we end up doing is allowing the president to wage a war without Congress weighing in.”

Kaine added that the president acted initially “to protect American lives” and credited the White House for sending over an AUMF last year. “We haven’t done anything. So just the notion that maybe finally there’s some interest in this, I find gratifying. But we’ll have to work through the details,” he said.

Several Democrats said they were unaware of or hadn’t read the new AUMF language, but some greeted the opportunity to open debate on the issue.

“I haven’t read it but I’m encouraged by the fact that he’s not running away from this issue any longer,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said of McConnell. “The president has asked for this for a long time.”

Sen. Robert Menendez, who helped to get a Democratic draft AUMF through the Foreign Relations Committee as chairman in December 2014, said that the new authorization was news to him, but that he supported bringing up the issue.

“I’m for the Congress voting on an AUMF; of course it depends what the AUMF looks like,” Menendez said Thursday. “I don’t want a blank check,” he said.

Cornyn, who in December said that Republicans would not present an AUMF of their own until the president outlined a strategy, said that he nonetheless welcomed debate on the issue.

“I don’t think we should be afraid of that debate, but we need a coherent strategy from the president which we still don’t have and we also don’t need to tie the hands of the next president by restricting what the president can do,” Cornyn said.

“What I find kind of ironic about this is the president apparently thinks he has all the authority he needs to do what he’s doing,” he added. “But I’m not afraid of the debate, I think it’s an important debate to have, and certainly the people we send in harm’s way need to know that the country is behind them. So, thanks for telling me.”

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Senate to Vote on Limiting Syrian Refugees

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 10:34:26 -0500

Following a three-day Republican retreat in Baltimore last week in which the House pitched big ideas and complained about the slow pace of progress in the Senate, senators will return alone to Washington on Tuesday to take up one of the bills their House colleagues passed last November.

The Senate will vote Tuesday night to open debate on a House-passed bill limiting the immigration of Syrian refugees to the United States, amid simmering concerns about the threat of potential terror attacks.

The bill, which passed the House in November on a veto-proof vote of 289-137, came on the heels of the terror attack in Paris, in which at least one Syrian refugee stands accused, but before the attacks in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 in early December.

But although the bill garnered the support of 47 Democrats in the House, it faces a filibuster threat from the minority party in the Senate. At least six Democrats would be needed to advance the legislation, along with all 55 Republicans. (In the House, just two Republicans, including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who said the measure did not go far enough, opposed the bill last November.)

The American SAFE Act, as the House dubbed the legislation, would require both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to run background checks certifying that any refugee from Syria or Iraq—or those who have visited either country since March 2011—is not “a threat to the security of the United States” before entering the country. The Obama administration, which opposes the measure, has said that the level of screenings Congress is asking for, particularly in the case of Syrian refugees, would be nearly impossible to conduct.

The issue has become a focus in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and could make waves—or least campaign ads—for the three candidates currently residing in the Senate.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who introduced his own legislation to restrict refugees from Syria from entering the country last year, raised the issue at last Thursday’s debate, criticizing Sen. Marco Rubio for opposing a much stricter measure last year. That bill, sponsored by fellow presidential contender Rand Paul, would have temporarily halted immigration of any individuals from 33 countries, largely in the Middle East, that are considered “high-risk,” and required individuals from any other country to wait 30 days before entering the U.S. to allow for additional screenings.

The Paul amendment, which he attached to the Senate’s Affordable Care Act repeal bill in December, failed 10-89.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the capture of 10 American Navy sailors in Iran last week, and their subsequent release 16 hours later, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a full panel hearing Wednesday to review the Iran deal’s effects on the Middle East. Last week’s detention has raised congressional interest in the Obama administration’s deal, which was already the subject of criticism from Republican and some Democratic members.

Here’s what else is on tap this week:

ENERGY

As the Senate prepares to potentially take up a broad energy bill from its members, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing Tuesday to get guidance from energy-policy analysts on the near-term outlook for energy and commodity markets. The hearing will include testimony from Energy Information Administration head Adam Sieminski.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday will mark up revisions to the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act, a measure that includes several public-lands and conservation measures along with bills related to hunting and fishing. The committee will also vote on bills related to conservation of the Great Lakes and Long Island Sound.

Fresh off of announcing new policies to foster driverless vehicles, National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Mark Rosekind will speak Thursday at the opening day of the Washington Auto Show, where carmakers will show off their autonomous and clean-fuel models. New automotive technology will also be the focus of a congressional briefing on Wednesday and a hearing on Thursday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

HEALTH

Addressing mental health is one of Chairman Lamar Alexander’s main priorities for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And that’s what the panel will discuss on Wednesday at a hearing titled, “Improving the Federal Response to Challenges in Mental Health Care in America.”

Proposals addressing mental health have already cropped up in the upper chamber this session, such as one from HELP panel members Bill Cassidy and Chris Murphy and another from Sen. John Cornyn, whose bill will be discussed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Jan. 26. The HELP Committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray, and Alexander are working on proposals of their own, which could be merged with their colleagues’ legislation.

On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee will bring in Andy Slavitt, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acting administrator, to review health care co-ops’ financial and oversight controls. Last year, co-ops came under fire as some states shuttered their programs, which were originally included in the law to help lower premiums on the exchanges and increase competition.

JUSTICE

The Senate Judiciary Committee will gather Wednesday for a hearing on “The Adequacy of Criminal Intent Standards in Federal Prosecutions.” The hearing will explore a divisive issue in the bipartisan push to reform the criminal-justice system: whether to expand requirements that prosecutors show defendants knew their behavior was illegal.

Some lawmakers say the nation’s large array of criminal laws mean that companies and people can easily run afoul of the law without any criminal intent. But critics of toughening requirements to show “mens rea” (or “guilty mind”) say it could stymie prosecution of white-collar crimes that endanger food safety, environmental and worker protections, and more.

The committee already cleared a broad bill last fall that would ease harsh mandatory-minimum sentences for certain drug offenders, and enable some prisoners to shorten their sentences by taking part in programs aimed at reducing their likelihood of re-offending.

WHITE HOUSE

Much of President Obama’s week is devoted to urban policies, but it begins with a focus on foreign policy Tuesday when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull meets with the president. Turnbull took office last September. On Wednesday, it’s off to Detroit to celebrate the rebirth of the domestic auto industry by attending the North American International Auto Show. Thursday will have more talk about issues important to cities like Detroit when the president speaks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors and takes questions. Then, on Friday, Obama will preside over the National Medals of Science/Technology and Innovation ceremony at the White House.

Jason Plautz, Rachel Roubein, Ben Geman and George E. Condon Jr. contributed to this article.

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Election Years and Smooth Spending Bills Don’t Mix

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 11:00:00 -0500

Congress is heading back to Washington with a big goal in mind: passing all 12 appropriations bills on time. But as with all New Year’s resolutions, this is going to be a hard one to keep.

Members of Congress now find themselves in the true opening stages of the 2016 election. Presidential years tend to suck the air out of Washington, leaving members to keep the government’s doors open and lights on, while real political battles are fought in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But key members of both parties say they won’t be mere window dressing to the presidential election this year, expressing confidence in both chambers that while their candidates square off in debates and at ballot boxes, they can pass 12 new appropriations bills that will fund the government and, potentially, make major changes to the way the federal government operates and spends its money.

“This hasn’t been done since 1994, but it’s how Congress ought to operate so that we can better protect the taxpayer dollars and make our place the true representative body that it is,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in December.

That’s not a small goal. Appropriations bills, which fund everything from the military to research for Alzheimer’s to Congress’s own operations, are complex, time-consuming, and often politically contentious.

But after years of passing massive omnibus spending bills, often at the last minute, like the $1.1 trillion package they passed last month, Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell say they’re up to the task. Democrats have said that they are on board as well, giving Republican leaders some hope.

Mark Murray, a former House Appropriations Committee staffer and now the vice president of Cornerstone Government Affairs, is skeptical. “This is, after all, the season of optimism, the beginning of the year, goodwill and so forth,” Murray said Tuesday. Like a Jan. 1 vow to hit the gym, Congress’s current optimism may not last through the year. Here are some of the major hurdles they’ll face in the process.

1. It hasn’t been done in more than 20 years. Congress hasn’t passed all 12 appropriations spending bills through both the House and Senate since 1994, when Democrats controlled both chambers, President Bill Clinton was in the White House, and Sen. Lindsey Graham’s beloved flip phones were advanced technology.

Since then, Congress has typically been able to agree to five or six appropriations bills on less contentious issues, like funding the Defense Department, lumping the rest of the government’s funding into a last-minute omnibus package. At worst, as has been the case in recent Congresses, they haven’t passed any.

2. “Problem child” appropriations bills. Every year, members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees find themselves at loggerheads over a few of the most controversial bills—“problem child” bills, as Murray, calls them. These include funding bills for the Labor Department and Health and Human Services Department; the State Department and foreign operations; the Homeland Security Department; and the IRS and the White House (which fall under the umbrella of the Financial Services subcommittee).

Those bills are difficult to pass through one chamber, much less both of them, in an average year (see point 1, above). But in a presidential-election year focused on the economy and taxation, the fight against ISIS, immigration, and refugees from Syria, not to mention health care, all of these bills will be breeding grounds for political fights.

3. Obamacare. House Republicans spent their first week of 2016 in Washington sending a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act to President Obama’s desk, a move that will certainly earn a presidential veto but has nonetheless been a major ideological victory for the Republican Congress. Given Congress’s recent tendency to pass massive omnibus bills just before a deadline for a government shutdown, Republicans have largely left the health care law alone in the appropriations process, proposing only changes that have some bipartisan support.

But if members are given the opportunity to pass a separate Labor/Health and Human Services bill this year, one that could be vetoed without threatening a shutdown, appropriations-watchers expect that taking down at least some parts of Obamacare in the process could be a top priority for the GOP. That’s certainly going to raise some feathers among Democrats. And while Republicans could have the numbers to get an Obamacare repeal or change through committee, and potentially through the House, they’ll need to get five Democratic votes in the Senate to send that bill anywhere.

4. It’s 2016, stupid! On the one hand, Republican leaders say they won’t let the presidential election keep them from doing their own work and, in fact, hope to act to create a policy platform for their eventual nominee and the party writ large to run on in November. But on the other hand, there’s a lot more to the 2016 election than just the presidential race.

Republicans have five candidates seeking reelection to the Senate in states that Obama won twice. And four of them already have pretty serious Democratic opposition, while Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania awaits the outcome of a three-way primary to oppose him in November. For these members and vulnerable Republicans in the House, passing all 12 appropriations bills is a double-edged sword. Appropriations bills are typically amendable, giving members an opportunity to put up an amendment or several that could help out back home before the election, but that sets up vulnerable members for a lot of tough votes on controversial amendments offered by other members, including anything from abortion rights to immigration to gun control.

5. Obama’s new gun regulations. Speaking of gun control, Obama threw a bit of a wrench in the appropriations process on Tuesday by announcing several new executive orders related to guns. Although the president said that he was moving to circumvent Congress until the legislative branch “gets on board with common-sense gun-safety measures,” he can’t quite circumvent it entirely. Even before Obama’s announcement on Tuesday, Republicans were already pointing to the appropriations process as a potential place to shut down the new executive orders.

Members of Congress can’t technically legislate through appropriations bills, but they can fund—or more likely in this case, defund—various departments or actions. And if Obama hopes to hire more people to conduct background checks and build up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, he’ll likely need more money from Congress to do it.

6. The House Freedom Caucus. Many members of the conservative House group have yet to see a federal spending bill they liked. And while Republicans will have greater control over the appropriations process by starting with all 12 bills early than in a deadline-driven mad dash to file an omnibus, it’s unlikely that Ryan can count on the votes of Freedom Caucus members for any of the appropriations bills.

Typically, former House Speaker John Boehner relied on a coalition of establishment Republicans and Democrats to pass spending bills, a tactic Ryan had to use at the end of 2015, when 95 of his members bailed on the final omnibus package. It’s unlikely that the number of Republican defectors will be that high on a single appropriations bill; many of the so-called “hope yes, vote no” caucus objected to the mere size of the omnibus package and the lack of time to properly go through it.

But with the stakes much lower for a single appropriations bill on the floor monthsbefore the government’s funding runs out, it’s unclear how much pressure either Republicans or Democrats will feel to make up for the “nays” from Freedom Caucus members and other spending-minded Republicans.

7. Running out of time. Although both leaders have promised floor time for appropriations bills and there isn’t much else on the congressional to-do list for 2016, the timeline is still tight. Members hope to have all 12 bills done, at least in the House, before the conventions begin in July and members depart for their August recess, Murray said. That means that appropriators will begin holding hearings on the bills later this month, with plans to begin getting them on the House floor in March, he added. That timeline leaves very little room for error and any major fights could cause major scheduling issues.

8. Syrian refugees and other “poison-pill” riders. As with the Affordable Care Act, Republicans are expected to at least attempt to attach language to one or more of the appropriations bills dealing with Syrian refugees, a major issue for the party that was left unresolved at the end of 2015 and could cause serious headaches for Democrats. Other so-called “poison-pill” riders could include language on abortion rights, campaign finance measures supported by McConnell that failed to make it into the 2015 omnibus bill, additional gun-control measures supported by Democrats, and others. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has also indicated he may try to wrangle another controversial issue into the appropriations process: killing the long-contested nuclear-waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada once and for all.

9. The budget resolution. Although Congress passed a two-year budget deal last year, they’ll still have to wait on a budget request from Obama, expected to come down sometime in February, and pass budget resolutions of their own. Last year’s budget deal makes it unlikely that there will be major fights over the spending caps agreed to in 2015, but upsets are still possible and the timing of a final resolution could further hamper appropriators’ already tough timeline.

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Spending Bill Remains Up in the Air as New Shutdown Deadline Approaches

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 12:36:10 -0500

Congress managed to avoid a weekend session by passing a short-term spending bill at the end of last week, but they headed home to their districts Friday with two major pieces of legislation still very much up in the air.

With a Wednesday deadline to avoid a government shutdown, members of Congress still have not come to an agreement on how they’ll keep the doors open—nor have they reached a deal to make permanent some favored tax breaks for businesses and individuals. Congressional leaders and top tax negotiators planned to spend the weekend in Washington to hash out final deals on both packages, with leadership hopeful that an omnibus and tax deal could be posted in the House on Monday.

“Our projection is for the House to post an omnibus on Monday and vote on it by Wednesday,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters last week, emphasizing that the omnibus was not yet completed.

At issue for the omnibus spending bill are several policy riders preferred by each party. Republicans have variously pushed to lift the ban on crude-oil exports and to alter campaign finance laws, while Democrats have pressed to protect the Obama administration’s environmental regulations and for additional gun-restriction measures. As negotiators continue their talks through the weekend, leaders have remained mum about which policy riders are still under consideration.

“I think there are a few outstanding issues that have not been resolved. But it’s kind of one of those things where nothing’s resolved until everything’s resolved,” Cornyn said Thursday.

The hope, Cornyn added, is that once the House passes the funding bill—which could include a tax deal—Wednesday, the Senate can get a unanimous agreement to pass the bill that evening, avoiding the need for another short-term continuing resolution.

Still, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers said although the House expects to post a finished bill Monday, there could be a need for another short-term spending measure to give the Senate time to work through procedural hurdles.

He said, as members were leaving the Capitol on Friday, that many of the outstanding policy issues had been kicked up to leadership, so appropriators were waiting for a deal to be cut so they can write the bill, have it scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and post the text.

“Some of these things, the big policy questions, of course, will be dealt with by the leadership,” he said. “The run-of-the-mill appropriations stuff, we’ll take that up when leadership deals with the policy issues.”

There are still several issues left to resolve for Congress to pass a tax deal as well. Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch said Thursday that he would stay in Washington through the weekend to try to get a larger deal on tax extenders, but suggested that negotiators may soon have to move on to a two-year extension of current policy if a larger deal can’t be made.

“Both sides are doing their very best to get the issues that are as good for their side as they can and that’s what’s happening now,” Hatch said Thursday. “But soon we’ll come up against the wall of having to act and I think when that happens, hopefully we’ll get this done. I can live with the two-year program.”

Hatch was wary about discussing details of the potential, larger deal with the press, but did say that any package he would accept would include a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s risk corridors provision, often referred to by Republicans as bailout money for insurance companies.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was optimistic Congress would pass the omnibus before the deadline, but said her caucus will firmly oppose the larger tax extender package—even if it’s rolled into the omnibus. “I don’t see very much support on the Democratic side for the tax-extender bill,” she said. “It’s a massive, permanent giveaway—[an] unpaid-for tax-extender package, which is really destructive. … I wouldn’t vote for it, and I wouldn’t recommend that anybody else vote for it.”

The size of a final tax package is a concern for many Democrats throughout the Capitol, particularly because many of the tax breaks that would be made permanent are not fully paid for. But Hatch argued Thursday that by focusing on the size of the deal, Democrats are missing many policy victories for both parties made possible by a larger agreement. “It’d be really stupid for the Democrats to not take the full [deal] … because both sides are treated pretty fairly,” Hatch said. “The Democrats are treated well and we are too. It’s a classic compromise that really deserves to be done.”

Pelosi has been pushing to end a longtime ban that prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from researching gun violence as a part of the year-end negotiations. According to Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Pelosi asked and received permission from her caucus to make it a top negotiating priority. On Friday, Pelosi said Republicans should view the measure as a sweetener to get Democrats on board with the omnibus. “You want our votes; here is a way to get them,” she said. Still, Democrats have given no indication they would be willing to kill an omnibus deal that did not include the provision.

Another big question is whether the year-end spending and tax deal will lift the ban on crude oil exports. Ending the 1970s-era restrictions is a priority for Republicans and the oil industry (and some conservative Democrats led by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp).

Democrats have signaled that they’re open to lifting the ban in return for a big list of GOP concessions, such as allowing long-term extensions of renewable electricity tax breaks and dropping “riders” that would thwart Obama administration environmental rules. And Delaware Democrat Tom Carper is pushing for tax breaks for refiners who would face higher costs if the ban is lifted.

It’s unclear if there’s a political sweet spot to be found. Dick Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, says the White House has been a “major negotiator” on the oil-ban rider. That suggests that while the White House has previously threatened to veto House legislation that mandates removal of the ban, there may be room for compromise if Democrats can get enough in return.

Alex Brown, Alex Rogers, Ben Geman and Daniel Newhauser contributed to this article.

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Spending Bill Remains Up in the Air

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 10:02:25 -0500

Welcome to the week in Congress that almost wasn’t.

With the omnibus spending bill and a major tax deal still up in the air, the House and Senate return to Washington this week, delaying a planned holiday vacation until at least Wednesday, when the current continuing resolution expires.

While leadership sorts out a final deal on an end-of-year spending bill, members will be watching a series of policy riders that could make or break the agreement. Here’s what they’ll be keeping an eye on and how members will fill their final week in Washington this year:

ENERGY

All eyes will be on the final omnibus package to see if Republicans were able to craft a deal to get a long-awaited repeal of the nation’s ban on crude-oil exports into the omnibus funding bill.

Meanwhile, a House Natural Resources subcommittee will literally dig deep into the issue of mining education with a field hearing in an underground classroom in Idaho Springs, Colorado. Members of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee will consider the bipartisan Mining Schools Enhancement Act, which looks to boost mining education in the face of a potential worker shortfall in the industry.

HEALTH

It’s crunch time for lawmakers hoping to include at least two Obamacare tax delays in an omnibus or tax-extenders package. Negotiations are still in flux. Yet, there are talks to include a delay of the Cadillac tax and medical-device tax, and these delays could be added to a two-year extender package.

Last week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said lawmakers were “strongly considering” adding the tax delays on to the two-year package. Delaying the Cadillac tax, which would be levied on expensive employer-sponsored plans starting in 2018, has wide support in both chambers. A full repeal of the tax on the reconciliation bill soared through the Senate in a 90-to-10 vote earlier this month (and because President Obama is certain to veto the bill repealing major provisions of his signature health law, members are trying to get a delay through during the end-of-the-year blitz).

Additionally, the legislation to renew health care benefits for 9/11 first-responders is caught in the omnibus and tax-extenders debate. Advocates and some lawmakers are pushing hard for the act to be in either one, and House Speaker Paul Ryan has “committed to reauthorize the program, and he will keep his word,” his spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said in an emailed statement Thursday. “We expect it will be included in one of the year-end legislative items.”

At a Thursday press conference, Sen. Chuck Schumer said where the Zadroga Act fits depends on how the negotiations go. Republicans are looking for pay-fors if the legislation is to be included in the omnibus, the Senate’s No. 3 Democrat said, but if pay-fors can’t be found, then members will push for it to be in the tax-extenders bill.

“Everybody’s for it. It’s going to be included,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview withPolitico.

TECHNOLOGY

Congressional negotiators are nearing a deal on legislation that aims to bolster the nation’s defenses against hackers. The Senate passed its own cybersecurity bill in October, and the House passed two related bills earlier in the year; the chambers are now trying to agree to one comprehensive piece of legislation. The legislation would encourage companies and the government to share information about cyberattacks, but privacy advocates warn it could funnel sensitive personal information into the hands of the National Security Agency. A House aide said lawmakers have agreed on the main issues and expect a vote before the end of the year.

The Federal Communications Commission will hold its monthly meeting on Thursday, when it will consider a proposal to streamline regulations for satellites and another to scrap certain regulations on local phone companies.

WHITE HOUSE

This is getaway week for President Obama. Or at least it will be if Congress and world events cooperate so that on Friday he can head with his family to Hawaii for the holidays. He has a light public schedule before that, with a trip to the Pentagon for a counterterrorism briefing set for Monday. Tuesday, he will attend a naturalization ceremony at the National Archives. On Thursday, there will be another terrorism briefing away from the White House when he goes to the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. The NCTC is the center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence.

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Lawmakers Look to a Short-Term CR to Avoid a Shutdown While They Finish Omnibus Spending Bill

Sarah Mimms and Daniel Newhauser, National Journal — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 19:45:43 -0500

Hopes for a comprehensive package of tax breaks began dimming Tuesday, as congressional negotiators lowered their expectations to a continuation of current law, even as leaders threatened a rare weekend session to finish talks over a catchall spending bill.

Negotiations over the two packages of legislation—one a six-year, $800 billion extension of several popular tax breaks and the other a $1.1 trillion bill funding every aspect of the federal government—had become intertwined in recent days. But House Speaker Paul Ryan sought to put some distance between the two on Tuesday, as leaders introduced a two-year, clean reauthorization of several expiring tax provisions as a fallback plan.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had been insisting on Democratic-favored tax provisions, in particular indexing the child tax credit to inflation. But Ryan told his conference at a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that he had no qualms falling back on the two-year bill.

“We’re not going to get jammed,” Ryan said, according to a source in the room.

Top tax-writing staffers from both parties were meeting as recently as Tuesday afternoon. But some members worried that the package, which would make permanent some tax breaks preferred by each party, appears to be collapsing under its own weight. The Senate too began preparing a two-year fallback plan, even though Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he is still pushing for the “more robust” deal.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who has pushed forcefully for a larger tax-extenders agreement despite the reservations of some of his members, said Tuesday that negotiators accomplished little over the weekend and only really got back to the business of trying to finalize a package on Monday night.

“Before we start talking about whether it’s a good package or a bad package, let’s have a package,” Reid said. “We don’t have anything to focus on right now.”

He was dismissive of concerns voiced by some Democratic members that the bill under discussion would benefit large corporations over middle-class Americans and lacks pay-fors. “These tax extenders—many of them are good for business, but those that are good for business are also good for everyday Americans,” Reid said. “And each year we [pass these extensions], they’re not paid for—with rare exception. So I don’t know what people are talking about.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said Tuesday that he’s unhappy with the possibility of abandoning the larger tax plan in favor of a two-year extension of current law, but he added that he trusts Rep. Kevin Brady and Sen. Orrin Hatch, the chairmen of the two chambers’ tax-writing committees, “who are conducting negotiations on our behalf.

“It’s a terrible way to do business every year or two years to do this,” Cornyn said. “We ought to make the ones permanent that deserve on the merits to be permanent, like the research and development tax credit. … What they’ve got is the default, the two-year bill and hopefully will make it more robust, like I said, with some permanent [extensions].”

Brady said Tuesday evening that he is considering adding a delay on two Obamacare-related taxes to the two-year extenders package—a medical-device tax and the Cadillac tax, a charge on employer-sponsored health insurance plans.

“We’re still strongly considering adding that on before we go to Rules. We don’t know when that will be,” Brady said. “A lot depends on how the negotiations continue.”

Both Brady and Cornyn added that as discussions on both the tax and spending bills continue, they may be combined into a single bill before Congress leaves town until January.

But when they’ll break for the holidays is still up in the air.

After leaders in both parties initially expressed optimism that they’d meet the Dec. 11 deadline to avoid a government shutdown heading into this week, the words “continuing resolution” began to echo through both chambers of the Capitol on Tuesday. Members on the appropriations committees say that the bulk of the work on spending is done, but a few dozen riders are stalling negotiations as Congress nears its deadline.

“We know we’ll have to deal with a short-term CR. We will not allow the government not to be funded, so we’ll do a short-term so we can finish our work,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Tuesday morning.

McConnell said Tuesday that he has already asked members to “be prepared to be here this weekend” in order to finish up work on the omnibus and tax legislation.

And Reid, who told reporters last week, “Seriously, I feel good about the omnibus,” downgraded that assessment Tuesday, saying that the spending and tax-extender issues were, at least, “alive.”

Even how long to delay the fight had become a point of contention. In a private meeting of Ryan’s circle of advisers from different factions in his conference, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan advocated for a six-week CR to give Republicans more time to fight for their riders, particularly a House-passed measure that would make the administration sign off on every Syrian refugee admitted to the country.

Freedom Caucus member Matt Salmon said that would allow Congress to work through the issues without facing what he called an artificial deadline of adjournment for Christmas break.

“Every time that we get jammed up against a holiday schedule with people wanting to be back in their districts and back with their families, we seem to end up getting things that we dislike intensely. And when we don’t have that kind of pressure, there’s a little bit more of an ability to fight,” Salmon said.

Yet the idea did not seem to be taking off in the conference. Leaders instead began planning a CR of only a few days, with the hope that a one-year package could be hammered out and voted on over the weekend or as soon as early next week.

That was in part because House Democrats said they would be amenable to a short-term continuing resolution, but not one that lasts several weeks. “A handful of days is not unreasonable,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said.

Rep. Joseph Crowley, the Democratic Caucus vice chair, added that his party has the backing of the White House in opposing a longer-term CR. “I don’t believe the president is supportive of an extender at this point beyond a few days maybe so we can cross the T’s and dot the I’s. The anticipation was that we’d get this done by the 11th,” Crowley said. “I don’t see how [a six-week extension] changes anything. It just postpones the inevitable.”

Senate leaders were no more amenable to a longer-term CR, with Reid arguing: “If they did that, it would be a very, very bad beginning for the new speaker.”

As far as riders, Hoyer said that his members would sustain a veto if a bill to restrict the flow of Syrian refugees were included in the omnibus. Though such a bill earned veto-proof numbers a few weeks ago, Hoyer said “there’s no doubt in my mind” Democrats would not give it such a margin as part of an omnibus package.

Meanwhile, Hoyer added that a measure to lift the crude-oil export ban is “on the table,” and, though not a preference of Democrats, it doesn’t rise to the level of other toxic riders they oppose.

Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican appropriator, said Democrats’ leverage is increased by the reluctance from some in his party to vote for a large spending bill.

“They have a lot of leverage because they’re going to put up a hell of a lot of votes on the omni. And given our track record on the CR and the omni, we don’t have as much leverage as we should,” he said. “Some of my colleagues on my side have to understand that—that our leverage is wounded because we have too many people who hope yes and vote no.”

Rachel Roubein contributed to this article.

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Senate Approves Budget Deal That Spares Federal Pay and Benefits

Sarah Mimms and Alex Rogers, National Journal — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 09:26:45 -0400

The Senate passed a two-year budget deal and raised the debt ceiling in the early hours of Friday morning, sending the combined legislative package to President Obama’s desk just five days before the nation hits its debt limit.

The legislation, which was crafted in a month-long negotiation between Obama and the top four congressional leaders including now-departed Speaker John Boehner, passed on a 64-35 vote over the objections of conservatives and presidential candidate Rand Paul’s shenanigans.

Friday morning’s vote takes some of the pressure off of the Republican-held Congress as members head into an election year. It puts off another debt ceiling crisis until March of 2017 and the two-year $80 billion-plus budget deal will give congressional appropriators some direction as they craft bills to keep the government open and operating through Sept. 2017.

But the latter task is not complete for now. The government’s current funding expires on Dec. 11 of this year, giving Congress just over a month to pass new legislation and avoid a federal shutdown. That effort will be led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has pushed throughout his tenure as leader for a return to regular order and hopes to avoid passing another slapdash short-term funding bill that would maintain current spending levels; and new House Speaker Paul Ryan, who will hardly have warmed the speaker’s gavel in his hand before having to turn to the often time-consuming process of writing and passing appropriations bills in order to meet that December deadline.

The Senate bill passed only after an awkward back and forth between McConnell and the man he endorsed for president—fellow Kentucky Sen. Paul—subsided.

Paul vowed repeatedly this week—including twice during the course of Wednesday night’s presidential debate—to filibuster the budget deal that McConnell himself help to negotiate.

But he missed his opportunity on Wednesday, as McConnell filed cloture to end debate on the bill. Paul, at the time, was in Colorado for a pre-debate rally. McConnell’s move to file cloture in his absence meant that the bill would come to a vote regardless of what Paul did, his only gambit would be to prevent it from getting 60 votes to move forward—votes that were already there before he returned to Washington from Boulder on Thursday.

Paul did speak on the Senate floor for about 20 minutes on Thursday afternoon to register his opposition to the bill, ending by asking for the unanimous consent of all senators to take up his own balanced budget legislation—a key part of his presidential platform—but that move earned an objection from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.

“This is supposed to be the body of deliberation,” Paul said on the Senate floor Thursday. “We’re supposed to be able to deliberate over how we’re going to fix the country. … I will vote no and I will continue this filibuster as long as there are enough votes here to allow it to continue.”

With that, Paul left the floor and took to both television and Twitter where he asked supports to “Stand With Rand” by encouraging their senators to vote against cloture and kill the budget deal.

But by 1 a.m. a cadre of tired senators looking forward to a typical three-day weekend sided with McConnell, voting in support of the budget and debt ceiling deal he’d worked out with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the White House and House leadership.

The House and Senate will return to Washington on Monday.

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Can Boehner Push Through a Debt Ceiling Increase Before He Leaves?

Sarah Mimms and Daniel Newhauser, National Journal — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:06:32 -0400

Speaker John Boehner is slated to retire Friday, setting up a busy legislative week as he tries to “clean the barn,” as he put it, for his likely successor, Rep. Paul Ryan.

The House will likely vote to authorize the Export-Import Bank and raise the debt ceiling before Wednesday’s internal conference election, setting up a Thursday floor vote to hand Ryan the speakership. That will leave it to the Senate to take up the debt ceiling measure after it finishes work on cybersecurity legislation on Tuesday. Senate leadership has said they will not vote on the Export-Import Bank reauthorization as a standalone bill.

Yet heading into Monday, House Republican leaders still do not have a concrete plan about how to raise the debt limit by the Nov. 3 deadline. A plan to do so with some conditions fizzled amid lackluster support last Thursday, and GOP members are increasingly resigned to another vote on a clean debt-limit increase as early as Tuesday.

Boehner’s allies have said his office has continued to speak with the White House about a spending deal as he heads for the exits, but Democrats have downplayed the possibility of a broad agreement, and President Obama has continually said he will not negotiate over the debt limit. GOP leaders are cognizant, meanwhile, that if they do not vote this week, they would be letting the issue drag on into the first week of Ryan’s speakership.

“The speaker is going to try to get that out of the way before Paul takes over,” Rep. Tom Rooney said Friday. “I know he’s trying to do something with the president, but we’ve been down that road so many times before. It would be great if he could come up with some big deal that makes us all feel great about ourselves, but if past is precedent, we’re going to end up doing a clean debt-limit vote sometime in the next two weeks.”

McCarthy and other leaders have said they do not have the votes on their side of the aisle to pass a clean increase. But several members said privately that they doubt his words are more than posturing to try to bolster Boehner’s negotiating position. The fact is, a cadre of GOP leaders, committee chairs, and centrist members have voted for a clean increase in the past, and stand willing to join Democrats to do so again.

“I don’t like to have to do it. We should be doing something to get the debt down. But when we don’t have 218 votes on our side, it’s tough to hold a position,” Rep. Devin Nunes, who voted for a clean increase in 2014, said. “I can’t imagine we are going to have a debt-limit crisis.”

For their part, Democrats have shown no interest in a potential deal to pair the debt ceiling to another must-pass bill, such as the Highway Trust Fund or a mandatory spending bill. “I don’t have any interest in any coupling,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday. “This is a non-negotiable: the full faith and credit of the United States of America.”

Pelosi’s No. 2, Whip Steny Hoyer, added that Hill Democrats are backing the White House’s demand that debt-limit negotiations come without preconditions. “The president’s view, which I share, is that the debt limit is not something that should be negotiated,” he said. That doesn’t necessarily preclude the debt ceiling from “riding” on another bill, but Hoyer saw such a scenario as unlikely. “If there is a carrier which can pass—but you only have five days. … Therefore, we think a carrier is unlikely to be a viable option at this point in time.”

Ultimately, Hoyer said, he believes that enough Republicans will cave and join a near-unanimous cohort of Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. “It’s inconceivable to me that there aren’t 30-plus Republicans to vote to make sure their country is solvent,” he said.

If the House fails to address the debt ceiling this week, Senate leaders are preparing for the possibility that they will have to take the first step to increase the nation’s borrowing limit. With a deadline of next Tuesday, Senate Republican leaders are already forecasting concerns about their ability to get legislation through the upper chamber in such a short period. Without total cooperation from all members, the Senate could take about a week to pass a debt-ceiling increase, Sen. John Thune said last week.

But given the difficulty of getting to 218 votes in the House, Senate leaders are still hopeful that the lower chamber will go first, sending over a blueprint that they can attempt to rush to Obama’s desk before the deadline. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed not long after taking over the Senate this year that his majority would not allow a default under his watch, but several members are demanding concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit that could hamper his ability to pass a bill quickly.

Sen. Ted Cruz has called for strict cuts in federal funding, but said last week that the U.S. should not default. Sen. Rand Paul, Cruz’s presidential rival, told Fox News on Friday that Congress should not increase the debt ceiling unless Republicans get “significant reforms” in federal spending in return.

Neither Cruz’s nor Paul’s objections would be sufficient to kill a debt-ceiling increase in the Senate, but any senator could hold up the process with just eight days to go before the U.S. defaults.

Alex Brown contributed to this article.

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The Debt-Limit First Move No One Wants to Make

Sarah Mimms, Daniel Newhauser, and Alex Rogers, National Journal — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 09:56:33 -0400

House and Senate leaders are at an impasse about how to move a debt-ceiling bill, after support for a House Republican plan to conditionally raise the nation’s borrowing cap collapsed amid wide complaints within the conference.

A Wednesday whip check of a debt-limit bill crafted by the Republican Study Committee found that it would not have enough GOP support to pass the House, so leaders have abandoned tentative plans to move forward with the bill, according to several sources within the leadership operation.

Many Republicans objected to the fact that the measure was not brought up through regular order and that the full implications of the plan could not be understood by members in the few days leading up to what would have been a Friday vote.

Centrist members, meanwhile, rejected the plan because many believe they will ultimately be called upon to bail out the conference and vote for a clean debt-limit increase that most GOP members would reject. Voting for the RSC plan and then a clean bill would have isolated them and made it appear they were caving while the rest of the conference was standing firm, according to members and aides involved in the discussions.

That same dynamic played out in 2014, when 28 Republicans voted with most Democrats to advance a debt-limit bill with no strings attached. But GOP leaders have said they are unsure they could find that much support this time around. Several of the members who voted for the 2014 bill have since retired or been defeated.

As a result, the House may cede its position as the body that will move a debt-limit bill first. Several House leadership sources said the House would not likely act before the Senate, even though the upper chamber’s unique processing issues would considerably slow the process.

Senate Republican leaders have said all week that they would wait on the House to act first, potentially adjusting whatever the lower chamber sent over to ensure that it could pass the Senate with the necessary Democratic support. Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 GOP leader, said Tuesday that leaders would prefer that the House act first because the Senate could need as long as a week to pass anything on the debt limit and leaders would hate to waste that floor time on something that couldn’t get to 218 votes in the House.

But with just a handful of legislative days left before the country reaches it debt limit, Senate leadership may have to reverse course and move before the House. Leaders have not set a public deadline for the House to act before they move forward, but they acknowledge that as they get closer to Nov. 3, the clock could force their hand.

“We’ve got, what, just two weeks from today basically,” Thune said Tuesday. “So yeah, I’d be game with the Senate jump-starting this thing if necessary.”

“We know what the deadline is,” added GOP Senate Whip John Cornyn on Thursday. “So we’re just waiting, for now, but at some point we probably can’t afford to wait any longer.”

Leadership expects to open any debt-limit legislation to amendment in the Senate, which could present problems in coming to agreement with the House, regardless of which chamber moves first.

Some House leadership sources have said Speaker John Boehner is continuing to work with House Democrats and the White House to try to craft a compromise that would include mandatory spending reforms, thus attracting some Republican votes. But time is running short, and the White House has said often that it does not plan to negotiate against the full faith and credit of the United States.

Whichever chamber moves first, Cornyn emphasized Thursday, Congress will not allow the U.S. to default on its debt.

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Senate Majority Leader Braces for a Storm of Conservative Protests Over Debt Ceiling, Budget

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 10:29:50 -0400

House Republicans have spent weeks trying to determine who their next speaker will be. On the campaign trail, 15 candidates are battling it out to be the GOP’s next presidential nominee, as Donald Trump’s continued rise fuels headaches within the party’s establishment and riles up the far right of the party’s base.

Amid all that chaos, on Tuesday afternoon, the Republican Party voted with one voice in the Senate to pass legislation that sits in lockstep with two of the party’s core values: combating illegal immigration and enforcing law and order.

The vote was a brief respite in a storm of Republican discord, intentionally set up as a moment of unity around legislation that the full caucus supports. But it will soon be followed by some tough decisions for the GOP, which are not likely to go over smoothly with the already-agitated Far Right.

Following the vote to strip federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities that limit or prohibit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officers to deport illegal immigrants Tuesday, McConnell faces a number of key deadlines that will force the majority leader to compromise with Democrats and the White House in ways that will alienate a handful of conservative members in the Senate and dozens in the House.

The deadline to raise the debt ceiling is fast approaching and acknowledging that the White House will accept nothing short of clean legislation, despite calls from the Right to seek concessions to lower federal spending, McConnell said Tuesday that he is happy to cede the lead role to outgoing Speaker John Boehner, who no longer faces the political consequences that his Senate partner has to contend with.

That’s true only for now, according to Sen. John Thune, the No. 4 in Senate leadership. The House is working to pass a reconciliation bill that would defund key aspects of the Affordable Care Act, leaving precious little time for the lower chamber to pass a debt-ceiling increase and give the Senate the longer period it will need to pass the bill onto President Obama. Thune said Tuesday that if the deadline draws too near without any action in the House, the Senate may need to get started on its own. But for now, leaders are leaving the problem of passing an increase that can clear Obama’s desk in Boehner’s hands.

Meanwhile, McConnell is working to broker a budget deal with the White House, alongside Boehner and Democratic leaders, that will keep the government funded past Dec. 11 when the next government-shutdown clock expires.

That deal will almost certainly necessitate that McConnell and Boehner—who himself will likely be out of office by the time the deal is announced—agree to increase spending for nondefense programs, a nonstarter for Far-Right members in both chambers. Given that such a deal is expected to come after Nov. 3, McConnell is likely to be left as the only Republican “in the room” on the deal to sell it to Republicans in both chambers. With the next speaker still unknown, the possibility (particularly if Rep. Paul Ryan takes a pass) that he or she will be more conservative than Boehner would make the pitch for a final deal in the House even more difficult.

Few details about the as-now hypothetical budget deal have yet emerged, in part, sources close to the talks say, because there aren’t yet many firm details to leak. But what has leaked so far is telling.

McConnell, who forecasted to his members during the summer that they would have to make some concessions on spending in an eventual budget deal, first leaked that talks were beginning earlier this month.

Democrats, who had been calling for Republicans to agree to budget talks for months, were furious that McConnell made public what they thought were early, private talks. In response, they leaked—including to this publication—that McConnell had asked Boehner and Obama to leave House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid out of the talks.

Despite the early spat, the talks have continued and the only substantive leak out of the discussions so far came just a week ago, when CNN reported that McConnell has asked for entitlement changes in exchange for a larger budget deal that will increase federal spending over the sequestration caps set to take effect next year. Unsurprisingly, Democrats immediately—and very publicly—said that request was a no-go.

But the demand has the same effect for McConnell as putting the sanctuary-cities bill on the floor this week: It gives him credibility with an increasingly fractious group of conservative members in both chambers and puts Democrats, not leadership, on the hook for any failure to reach the Far Right’s goals. It also provides a key talking point for members seeking reelection next year, particularly those who may have a primary opponent sniffing around their states and districts.

Will that be sufficient to keep Republicans happy under McConnell’s watch? That’s unclear.

But keeping members sufficiently happy with his leadership style and conservative credentials isn’t McConnell’s primary motivation. As National Journal has reported, while threats to oust him have grown louder since Boehner announced his resignation, McConnell’s job remains relatively safe.

What is at stake for the leader is less about reputation than it is about the institution. During the 2014 campaign, McConnell ran for reelection and campaigned for a Senate majority on the promise of returning to regular order and ending the governing-by-crisis style that had dominated in the past few years. As an institutionalist, increasing the debt ceiling and hashing out a major budget deal to allow Congress to pass regular spending bills next year (if not the following year as well), is paramount.

And that will require agreement from a large swath of congressional Republicans. Anything McConnell can do now to get the party on the same page and boost internal morale could go a long way in the fights to come.

“What we’re trying to do here in the Senate is make as much progress for the country as we can,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “I think it is also noteworthy that our agenda is entirely different from the agenda that we had last year. We have a different set of priorities [than Democrats], and are pursuing different outcomes, but we are choosing to advance the cause on the issues where there is at least enough bipartisan support to get it out of the Senate and hopefully, to get a presidential signature.”

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Senate Prepares to Pass Defense Bill That Obama Will Veto

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 10:19:59 -0400

While all the political focus will be on Thursday’s House GOP leadership elections, the legislative show must go on. So Congress this week will finish up its work on the National Defense Authorization Act, sending legislation to President Obama’s desk where a promised veto awaits.

The bicameral conference report on the NDAA passed the House on Thursday on a 270-165 vote and now heads to the Senate, where a procedural vote is expected on Tuesday.

The vote Tuesday will mark the second time in a week that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will present Democrats with a choice between maintaining their opposition to legislation that maintains the current sequestration caps for 2016 and funding U.S. defense operations.

The bill is expected to pass the Senate, with support from a handful of Democrats. But the majority of the minority party, like the White House, opposes the bill because of its use of Overseas Contingency Operations funds to offer additional money to the Defense Department over the sequestration caps, a move Democrats and many hawkish Republicans view as a gimmick.

The Senate’s vote will matter little practically, given Obama’s promised veto and the already sufficient votes in the House to sustain it.

The House, meanwhile, is set to bring to the floor this week a bill that would repeal the decades-old federal ban on crude-oil exports. The repeal effort has slowly picked up support in recent months, including the backing of House Speaker John Boehner, but still faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

The real focus in the House will be on Thursday’s leadership elections to replace Boehner as speaker and the jockeying for the majority-leader and whip positions, assuming those jobs open.

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

Aside from the oil-export bill on the House floor, Congress takes its first crack at the Volkswagen emissions-test-cheating scandal, with the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee calling in Volkswagen Group of America President Michael Horn to testify at a Thursday hearing. The committee will also hear from a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency on allegations that Volkswagen used a “defeat device” to dodge emissions requirements.

EPA acting air chief Janet McCabe will testify before the Energy and Power Subcommittee about the administration’s rules limiting carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants.

TECHNOLOGY

The House and Senate will hold dueling hearings Wednesday morning on ways to improve mobile Internet access. The Senate Commerce Committee’s hearing will discuss “removing barriers” to high-speed cellular networks, while the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee will examine ways for federal agencies to use the airwaves more efficiently, which would allow for more commercial wireless traffic.

Also on Wednesday, the Asia-focused subcommittees of the House and Senate foreign-affairs panels will take on cyber questions in Asia, with a hearing in the Senate on “the North Korean threat,” and a postmortem of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit in the House.

On the same very busy day, the House Transportation Committee’s aviation subcommittee will hear testimony from the Federal Aviation Administration deputy administrator about drone safety, and the House Small Business Committee will hold a hearing on the effects of the EMV chip standard for bank cards on small businesses.

HEALTH

On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee will hold a hearing on investing in the National Institutes of Health, at which its director is included on the witness list. The subcommittee has proposed raising the amount of funding appropriated to the NIH, which has generally received bipartisan support.

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee will hold its second hearing on Planned Parenthood. This one will focus on “the horrors of abortion procedures, details of late-term abortions, and the elements involved when altering an abortion in order to harvest fetal tissue.”

Also on Thursday, the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee will hold a hearing examining several bills aimed at addressing the nation’s escalating drug-abuse threat.

WHITE HOUSE

After two weeks with a heavy emphasis on foreign policy, President Obama shifts his attention to domestic issues and domestic travel this week. The only scheduled diversion to international issues will be a meeting Wednesday with German President Joachim Gauck. Much of Wednesday will be devoted to what the White House is calling a “Summit on Worker Voice,” an effort to give workers more say on workplace issues. On Thursday, the president will speak at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s annual awards dinner. On Friday, he hits the road, going to Seattle for Democratic Party events. Then it is on to Los Angeles on Saturday for more political fundraisers. He will spend the weekend in Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy part of San Diego County and home to many fine golf courses.

George E. Condon Jr., Caitlin Owens, Jason Plautz, Brendan Sasso and Kaveh Waddell contributed to this article.

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A Shutdown Has Been Avoided ... For Now

Sarah Mimms and Alex Rogers, National Journal — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 17:20:06 -0400

Congress has averted a midnight shutdown, as the House on Wednesday afternoon followed the Senate’s example by easily passing a temporary spending bill funding the government through December 11.

The stopgap measure passed the Senate 78 to 20 and then cleared the House on a 277-151 vote, despite the opposition of dozens of conservatives with objections to any package that continues to fund Planned Parenthood. Videos released by a pro-life group charge that the organization is illegally selling fetal tissue for a profit; the organization vigorously denies the allegations.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans were thrilled about the shutdown showdown, and both sides pointed fingers at the other for bringing the country to the brink. But there is some hope that the two sides can come to an agreement in the next few months for a longer budget deal clearing the decks for the next president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he spoke with President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner last week about “getting started” with negotiations for a two-year budget so the Republican-led Congress can have a regular appropriations process next year. Senate Democrats have blocked appropriations bills this year over opposition that the spending levels laid out in 2011 are too low, especially for domestic programs. “We are inevitably going to end up in a negotiation that will crack the Budget Control Act once again,” said McConnell a few weeks ago.

The negotiations could be boosted by Boehner, who will have nothing left to lose after announcing last week that he will retire on October 30. On Face the Nation Sunday, Boehner said he “might have a little more cooperation from some around town to try to get as much finished as possible.”

“I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn,” he added.

Members are already turning their eyes to December when the Senate hopes to pass appropriations bills based on a spending deal with the White House. But House conservatives, emboldened by Boehner’s resignation, may be even more difficult to corral on a deal that will almost certainly raise spending levels above sequestration caps for both defense and nondefense spending.

Several Republican senators following the vote on Wednesday said they were already worrying about the Christmas holidays and whether they’ll be able to leave Washington to visit their families and avoid a government shutdown. One Republican appropriator emphasized that the committee needs to get started on funding plans for December “tonight.”

Asked about the prognosis for December spending bills after Boehner’s departure, Sen. John McCain said: “I think it could be uglier because I think we could come closer to a government shutdown.”

But McCain added that he and other Republicans in the Senate’s old guard have already begun to reach out to House members urging unity. Their message: “Isn’t it better for us to at least try to come together than attacking each other all the time? What are we gaining from this?”

Sen. John Thune acknowledged the difficulty of passing spending bills again this December, given the fractious state of relations between the House and Senate. But, he added, the leadership teams aren’t changing much and he’s hopeful that Republicans in both chambers will get a good deal for the party that can pass.

(Image via Felix Lipov / Shutterstock.com)

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Congress Moves Halfway to Averting a Shutdown

Sarah Mimms and Alex Rogers, National Journal — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 11:00:39 -0400

Congress moved halfway toward averting a midnight shutdown, as the Senate on Wednesday morning easily passed a temporary spending bill funding the government through December 11.

The stopgap measure passed 78 to 20 and will be sent over the House, where it is expected to pass despite the opposition of dozens of conservatives with objections to any package that continues to fund Planned Parenthood. Videos released by a pro-life group charge that the organization is illegally selling fetal tissue for a profit; the organization vigorously denies the allegations.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans were thrilled about the shutdown showdown and both sides pointed fingers at the other for bringing the country to the brink. But there is some hope that the two sides can come to an agreement in the next few months for a longer budget deal clearing the decks for the next president.

The negotiations could be boosted by Boehner, who will have nothing left to lose after announcing last week that he will retire on October 30. On Face the Nation Sunday, Boehner said he “might have a little more cooperation from some around town to try to get as much finished as possible.”

“I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn,” he added.

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Republican Leaders Preparing to Make Deal on Raising Spending Caps

Sarah Mimms and Alex Brown, National Journal — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 10:01:27 -0400

Even as conservatives in both chambers are clamoring for spending cuts, not just to Planned Parenthood but to a slew of nondefense programs, Republican leaders are preparing to begin making a deal with President Obama to raise spending caps that will hit next year.

On Wednesday, Congress will pass a continuing resolution funding the government for just over two months, putting an end to fears of a government shutdown this week—for now. On the horizon, Congress faces a potentially bitter battle in December to keep the government open once again, this time with a new speaker of the House and an emboldened group of conservatives in the House.

With that fight looming, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke last week with House Speaker John Boehner and Obama to begin negotiations that will raise the sequestration spending caps over the next two years, McConnell told reporters Tuesday.

The phone call last Thursday marks the first step by Republicans in responding to a months-long filibuster push by Democrats, who refused to take up any spending bills until the majority agreed to raise spending caps on nondefense programs. Republicans had previously agreed to raise the caps only for defense spending—a no-go for Democrats, who worry that such a concession will only lead to deep cuts to the party’s favored programs, including perennial targets like welfare. The defense deal wasn’t much more popular with conservative members, concerned about out-of-control federal spending.

McConnell warned his party just two weeks ago that they would have to concede to Democrats on some points in order to get any real spending bills through Congress over the next year. “We are inevitably going to end up in negotiations that will crack the Budget Control Act once again,” he said.

Boehner has been much more tight-lipped about what he would like to see in next year’s budget, even before announcing his resignation last week. And it’s unclear how his likely replacement, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, will proceed—particularly as he courts conservative members bent on spending cuts in his bid for speaker.

McConnell, who has said repeatedly that he would negotiate directly with the White House over spending—ignoring pleas from Democratic leaders in Congress to sit down at the negotiating table with them—attempted to cut the minority out of the negotiations in his talk with Boehner and Obama last week, two Democratic aides said.

According to the aides, Obama briefed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi during a previously scheduled meeting just after the call. McConnell had asked that the negotiations move forward between just himself, Boehner, and Obama. But both the president and Boehner pushed back, insisting that in order to pass an eventual deal through Congress, they’ll need the support of Democratic leaders on both sides of the Capitol.

Aides to both McConnell and Boehner declined to comment on the call.

Since then, the White House has worked to loop Democratic leaders in on discussions leading up to their talks with Boehner and McConnell, working largely on a staff level at this point, one aide said. Reid met with Shawn Donovan, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to discuss the issue last week.

McConnell said Thursday that he hopes to set new top-line spending levels for both fiscal years 2016 and 2017, allowing Congress to go through the regular appropriations process next year and pass 12 spending bills—one of McConnell’s major goals as leader—rather than passing another last-minute, shutdown-avoiding continuing resolution as the two chambers have repeatedly done over the last several years.

Sen. Patty Murray, who along with Rep. Paul Ryan negotiated the last two-year budget deal to pass through Congress, said Tuesday that she was hopeful that Republicans would sit down with Democrats and come to another spending deal after passing the two-month continuing resolution later this week.

“I am hoping this next deadline can be different. I am hoping we can avoid the drama, avoid the countdown clocks, avoid the absurd last-minute swerve, and do what we did in 2013: work together, negotiate, and reach another bipartisan budget deal,” Murray said. “I am confident we can do it because we did it before—and it will be up to Republican leaders to join us at the table so we can do it again.”

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer warned earlier Tuesday that Democrats will not accept the planned sequestration cuts to nondefense programs next year, noting that Obama and even House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers have said repeatedly that those funding numbers “will not work.” Absent an agreement, Hoyer warned, Congress will be headed for yet another shutdown.

“We don’t want to shut down the government, but at the same time we’re not going to be dragooned into doing anything and everything just because they threaten to shut down government,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday.

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Congress Plans Votes on Short-Term Spending Measure to Keep Government Open

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 10:11:59 -0400

Congress returns to Washington on Monday with the threat of a government shutdown looming at the end of the week and the campaign to replace John Boehner as House speaker—and possibly fill out the undercard—kicking into high gear.

The Senate will vote Monday evening to advance legislation that will fund the government through Dec. 11, kicking the can on federal spending into the winter and a Boehner-free Congress. The upper chamber is expected to pass the legislation, which maintains funding for Planned Parenthood over conservative objections, as early as Tuesday, giving the House just over 24 hours to send the funding bill to President Obama’s desk.

Boehner has said that he’ll do just that, in one of his final acts as speaker, passing the clean funding bill with the help of Democrats and Republicans still loyal to their departing leader. Conservatives had vowed to hold a vote to take away Boehner’s gavel if he forced a vote on a clean bill, but with that point now moot, conservatives are shifting their focus to the upcoming leadership elections and their next opportunity to defund Planned Parenthood—another spending bill in December. A few dozen conservative members are still expected to oppose the CR, but even members of the House Freedom Caucus admit there will not be enough votes to take down the bill and force a shutdown. “It’s not going to happen,” Rep. Matt Salmon said Friday.

The real action in the House will come in the form of phone calls and whip lists clutched to the chests of the next would-be speaker and other members looking for a seat at the new leadership table. Though the election for speaker won’t occur until late October, several members are already taking a look at the race, and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the clear front-runner for the job, could face competition. A host of other members are looking to move up if McCarthy wins.

Here’s what else is on tap this week:

HEALTH CARE

The Senate on Monday will vote on a continuing resolution that includes Planned Parenthood funding. A spending bill must make it through both chambers by midnight on Wednesday to keep the government open.

The House will consider a bill that amends the small-group-market rules of the Affordable Care Act. The legislation currently has 187 Republican and 45 Democratic cosponsors.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday investigating Planned Parenthood. Cecile Richards, the president of the organization, will testify.

On Thursday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on health information technology. The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing, also on Thursday, on improper payments in federal health programs.

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will take another crack Wednesday at passing a bipartisan energy bill, which would touch on issues like electricity reliability, natural-gas infrastructure, and cybersecurity. The bill was supposed to get a vote at a markup last week, but was pulled as both parties continued to disagree about how to address issues such as climate change and renewable energy.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday will hear from Environmental Protection Agency air chief Janet McCabe at a hearing on the economic impact of the upcoming rule on ground-level ozone and carbon-pollution standards from power plants.

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will probe for answers on the search for life on other planets with a hearing on Tuesday that will convene one of NASA’s chief scientists as well as experts in astronomy, astrophysics, and space.

TECHNOLOGY

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on trade will hold a hearing Tuesday morning to examine the policy implications of the so-called “sharing economy” services like Uber and Airbnb. Republicans tend to praise these “disruptive” companies for challenging old business models, while some Democrats worry the companies may be flouting workplace and consumer protections.

WHITE HOUSE

For the second week in a row, foreign policy will dominate President Obama’s schedule. After high-profile hosting of foreign leaders at the White House, he hits the road, going to New York. There, on Monday, he will address the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. Most of the focus, though, will be on what happens later Monday—his first one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 15 months. The continuing crisis in Ukraine and Russian policy in Syria are on the agenda. Obama also will meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attend a U.N. summit on peacekeeping, as well as a summit Tuesday on international efforts to combat terrorism.

Caitlin Owens, George E. Condon Jr., Brendan Sasso, Clare Foran and Jason Plautz contributed to this article.

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Dems Protect Planned Parenthood Funding, Block Budget Extension

Sarah Mimms and Caitlin Owens, National Journal — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 15:37:16 -0400

Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill Thursday that would keep the government from shutting down at month’s end but strip funding from Planned Parenthood.

The bill was voted down 47-52, with eight Republicans crossing over to oppose the measure and one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voting with Republicans for a second time to end funding for Planned Parenthood. Many of the Senate Republicans who voted against Thursday’s spending bill say they don’t believe the fight over Planned Parenthood funding should threaten the operation of the government.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins who opposed the measure, warned against the strategy on Tuesday when the vote was initially announced. “I don’t think the two issues should be linked,” Collins said Tuesday. “I think that we need a clean CR in order to make sure the government does not shut down and that is my top priority.”

The bill, which would have kept the government open through Dec. 11, was Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s opening move in what has become a high-stakes game of budget chicken. The Republican leader has been very clear that his end goal is to avoid a shutdown, but if—and how—he will achieve this remains up in the air, especially as some Republicans say they won’t vote for any measure that extends federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

McConnell has repeatedly warned his caucus that attaching the Planned Parenthood measure to a government funding bill would fail. Thursday’s vote demonstrated that point to conservatives in the Senate, and perhaps more importantly, the House. McConnell is now expected to bring up a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open through Dec. 11. That measure should pass the Senate, but it’s unclear when the bill will clear the upper chamber and whether the House can stomach it.

A spending bill must pass through both houses and be signed by the president by Sept. 30 to prevent a government shutdown. Conservatives, including the House Freedom Caucus and Sen. Ted Cruz, have vowed to oppose any measure that continues federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

The fight over abortion on the Hill stems from the release of a series of sting videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood illegally selling fetal tissue. The organization denies the allegations, saying it donated them to medical research and only charged the overhead costs.

With support for a clean continuing resolution in the Democratic caucus and a large portion of the Republican majority as well, Cruz and others cannot prevent the Senate from passing the funding bill, but he could delay it. The Senate requires unanimous approval to shorten its lengthy process for considering and voting on new legislation. With just four legislative days left for Congress to agree on a funding bill before the Sept. 30 deadline, Cruz could wield a lot of power over the clock.

After the vote, Cruz did not say what, if any, action he will be taking next to oppose a clean continuing resolution.

“The timing of the vote is not consequential, whether the vote is Saturday or Sunday or Monday,” he told reporters after the vote. “What’s consequential is that we do the right thing, and so my focus is on urging Republican leadership and all Republicans to stand up and do the right thing - to honor the commitments we made to the men and women who elected us.”

Sen. Rand Paul, who is running against Cruz for the Republican presidential nomination, opposed Thursday’s bill — but not, his office insisted in a statement — because he disagrees with Cruz on the Planned Parenthood issue. Paul opposed the bill because he does not support the continuing resolution and, his office added, has never supported one since entering Congress in 2010.

“Sen. Rand Paul today proved that he is the only candidate willing to stand up to the Washington Machine and put an end to its out-of-control spending. … Sen. Paul has led the charge against Planned Parenthood and introduced legislation to defund it,” Paul’s office said in a statement. “This Short-Term Continuing Resolution, however, does everything except resolve the problem— it is a canard. This ‘resolution’ will add $400 billion in new debt over the full year and a $10 billion increase over the budget caps.”

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Senate Leader Offers Bill to Keep Agencies Open and Defund Planned Parenthood

Sarah Mimms and Caitlin Owens, National Journal — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 15:16:05 -0400

Here we go again.

With just five legislative days left before a government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday morning filed a short-term government funding bill that would also defund Planned Parenthood, a coup for conservatives in both chambers.

A vote on the measure, which would fund the government through Dec. 11, will come Thursday, alongside the pope’s visit to the Capitol. But the measure is likely to fail, setting up a shutdown countdown clock in the Capitol building ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government.

Democrats have said repeatedly that they will not support anything but a clean continuing resolution to fund the government at its current spending levels, and earlier attempts to defund Planned Parenthood failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to proceed, earning just two Democratic votes.

Given the party’s stance on clean government-funding bills over the past several years, it’s unlikely that any more Democrats will be swayed by this new legislation. But Republicans could lose some of their own members on the measure as well.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said she would vote against a continuing resolution that defunds Planned Parenthood, saying there should instead be an investigation by the Justice Department to determine whether the organization broke any laws.

“If the CR defunds Planned Parenthood … I would vote against that, because … I don’t think the two issues should be linked. I think that we need a clean CR in order to make sure the government does not shut down, and that is my top priority,” Collins said.

Collins did say that she believes the vote will show conservatives definitively that linking the attack on Planned Parenthood with a government spending bill will not work.

“I don’t want to speak for the leader, but I believe he is trying to show the House very clearly that linking the issue of funding for Planned Parenthood with funding for all of government is a nonstarter here in the Senate and that the Senate does not want to see government shutdown,” Collins said.

Collins said she is hopeful for a clean, but very short-term continuing resolution that would expire as early as November, to give herself and fellow members of the Appropriations Committee time to draft new funding bills and pass them through both chambers before the end of the year.

McConnell has said repeatedly that a continuing resolution that defunds Planned Parenthood would be incredibly difficult to pass through the upper chamber and would certainly not earn the president’s signature, warning members of his party from trapping themselves in a box canyon over federal funding yet again.

But the vote will allow Republicans to go on the record once again as opposing funding for Planned Parenthood, which has been at the center of controversial video tapes alleging that it has sold fetal tissue for profit. Republicans will vote on the continuing resolution alongside a Tuesday procedural move to pass a federal 20-week abortion ban, just as the pope visits the Capitol on Thursday.

“We should stand for our principles, and our principles should not be surrendering to the Democrats,” Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters Tuesday. Cruz has rallied conservatives in both chambers and religious leaders over the past few months in opposition to Planned Parenthood, warning McConnell and other congressional leaders that he will oppose any government-funding measure that provides money to the health organization.

When cloture on the Planned Parenthood measure fails, as soon as Thursday, McConnell is expected to bring up a clean funding bill that would keep the government’s doors open through later this year, with support from Democrats and a likely majority of Senate Republicans, who are fearful of earning blame for another government shutdown in just a two-year span.

Whether that can pass the House—where conservatives are similarly pressing to defund Planned Parenthood before funding the government—ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline remains an open question.

House Republicans have a conference meeting scheduled for Friday where they will again discuss how to tackle federal funding for Planned Parenthood and a short-term spending measure.

McConnell filed the legislation just minutes after Democrats again blocked a funding bill for the Defense Department, after promising all summer to block any funding bills until Republicans agreed to enter into negotiations to raise spending caps on nondefense spending for next year.

McConnell blamed Democrats for taking the country to the brink of a shutdown over their “demands for more debt and more bureaucracy” after filing the continuing resolution Tuesday, asking Democrats to work with them to keep the government open and “hit the pause button” on Planned Parenthood’s funding while Congress investigates the organization.

“Americans want Democrats to now work with us responsibly to get our country get out of a situation that they in fact have engineered. The bill before us would do that,” McConnell said. “It would keep the government open through the fall while adhering to the bipartisan spending levels already agreed to by both parties.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid criticized McConnell for holding yet another vote on Planned Parenthood funding, the third this year, before moving onto a clean continuing resolution. “This is yet another case of the Republican leader just wasting time before we address the real deal,” he said, noting that the new Republican majority in the Senate has held “more re-votes than any other majority party in the history of our country.”

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McConnell: GOP Will Barter Over Automatic Spending Cuts

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 20:22:08 -0400

As Congress prepares to pass a short-term continuing resolution, putting off a government shutdown for a few months, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Republicans Wednesday that they’ll have to negotiate with Democrats to roll back looming spending cuts later this year.

“We are inevitably going to end up in negotiations that will crack the Budget Control Act once again,” McConnell said during a press conference on Wednesday. “Now let me just say this about the Budget Control Act. Before we started revisiting it, it actually did a pretty good job. We reduced government spending for two years in a row for the first time since the Korean War. … But there’s a lot of pressure in Congress to spend more; the administration certainly wants to spend more.”

Passing a clean continuing resolution in the next few weeks, which McConnell again emphasized should not include measures favored by conservatives to end funding for Planned Parenthood, “will give time for us to engage with the administration in determining how much we’re going to spend and where we’re going to spend it” later this year, he said.

Though he called it “unfortunate,” McConnell said his warning was born of practicality. Democrats blocked several spending measures earlier this year, telling Republicans that they would not pass any new funding bills unless the majority agreed to turn back sequestration cuts on nondefense programs. And, McConnell said, President Obama is “in a key position” to veto any new spending bills that allow sequestration cuts to go through as planned.

Many conservatives in both chambers would rather see another continuing resolution passed later this year or early next year than to raise the spending caps for nondefense programs. But McConnell, a Senate traditionalist, has long pushed for Congress to go through the regular appropriations process and pass new spending bills. That, he said, will require compromise. But not just with Democrats.

“We’ll be forced into a discussion about how much we’re going to spend,” McConnell said. “We know our Democratic friends’ goal is to spend more money on everything. As all of you know, I’ve got members who want to spend more on defense—I put myself in that group as well—and we’ll enter into a classic negotiation. We can work out our differences and fund the government.”

McConnell’s announcement is a coup for Democrats who have been blocking spending bills for months to force the leader to sit down at the table with them and hash out a sequestration-relief plan for both defense and nondefense spending.

With sequestration caps threatening defense spending as well, some Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham and John McCain, have already begun talks with Democratic members to find a compromise. But it is much less clear how the House will react to funding bills that raise spending caps for nondefense programs and whether there are enough votes in that chamber to pass such legislation.

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9/11 First-Responders – With Jon Stewart – Hit the Hill

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:56:46 -0400

Comedian Jon Stewart had a message for the hundreds of firefighters and police who descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday to pressure Congress to renew health care benefits for 9/11 first-responders, which begin to expire next month: He’s sorry.

“I want to apologize to all the men and women, first-responders, that you had to come down here today,” Stewart said at a rally in front of the Capitol Wednesday morning. “I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed for our country, I’m embarrassed for New York, I’m embarrassed that you, after serving so selflessly, with such heroism, have to come down here and convince people to do what’s right for the illnesses and difficulties that you suffered because of your heroism and because of your selflessness. Nobody had to lobby you to rush toward those towers that day.”

But Stewart, formerly of The Daily Show, also offered a warning to first-responders: “Today on the Hill, you will be exposed to possibly toxic levels of bullshit and arrogance.”

Stewart was joined by hundreds of first-responders as well as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Jerry Nadler, and Peter King, all members from New York who have sponsored the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act. Gillibrand and others have credited Stewart’s consistent ribbing of members of Congress who opposed the bill in 2010 with helping to get it passed in the first place.

The bill, which provides compensation and health care benefits to 9/11 first-responders, begins to expire this month. It includes the World Trade Center Health Program, which pays for health care for first-responders and will expire on September 30, though the fund can be drawn from for an additional year. It also includes the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which provides additional funds to victims and expires in October 2016.

There may already be some movement on the issue. Asked Wednesday whether the program should be extended and whether that could be part of a continuing resolution, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “I’m going to be meeting with first responders later today myself, and we do plan to extend the program and the committees of jurisdiction in the House and the Senate are actually working on the details now.”

The exact details of what McConnell is proposing remain unclear, but New York Sen. Chuck Schumer responded: “That is great news at last.”

The bill almost died in 2010 and was initially voted down in the House, amid Republican concerns over the cost of the bill and that it was, at the time, permanent. Gillibrand and others helped to negotiate a deal with Sens. Tom Coburn, now retired, and Michael Enzi, to shorten its authorization to six years, a deal that passed the Senate unanimously.

Supporters now hope to push Congress to make both programs permanent, citing additional research linking diseases to toxins found at the 9/11 site and similar funds set up for coal-miners and former nuclear workers. More than 4,100 first-responders and survivors have contracted cancer related to 9/11, according to the Centers for Disease Control, while more than 33,000 have at least one related illness or injury.

So far, the bill has 151 co-sponsors in the House, including 33 Republicans, and 37 sponsors in the Senate, including six Republican members.

Asked why the reauthorization is needed now, while both programs will continue to operate for the next year, Stewart said: “My feeling is if you have stage 4 cancer and you get a letter of notifications saying that the medicine you rely on may be ending in a year, that to me is an urgent-care situation. … These illnesses that they have are not on five-year cycles.”

Stewart noted that of the four first-responders he interviewed on his show in 2010, one of them, John Devlin, has “already passed away” from related illnesses.

T.J. Gilmartin, a first-responder who ran to the towers from a high rise he was building in Manhattan on 9/11, noted that there could be many more cases of illness to come, long after the current Zadroga bill expires. “I have an asbestos supervisor’s license. Asbestos and mesothelioma, there’s a 20-year lag time on that. … What is five years going to do? It’s not exactly 20 years. [In] 2020, 2022, you could have a lot of guys dying from lung cancer,” he said. The Mesothelioma Center says the latency period can typically run anywhere from 20 to 50 years.

The hundreds of first-responders, and their families, who came to the Capitol Wednesday include Joseph Zadroga, whose son James was the first New York Police Department officer to die of complications from the toxic chemicals at the site of the World Trade Center towers. They hope to visit 535 congressional offices, thanking those members who have already signed onto the reauthorization bill and trying to convince members who haven’t to join the effort.

John Feal, a first-responder and the founder of the FealGood Foundation that advocates for fellow 9/11 responders, helped to organize the rally and office visits on Wednesday. “We’re here to challenge Congress to be an American, to be a human being with compassion,” Feal said at Wednesday’s rally. “But we’re also not going to take no for an answer. … I’m going to put my foot in their ass. I’m not going to sugarcoat this—foot to ass—because this is about human life. We’re talking about men and women dying.”

Feal said that he and other first-responders have now made 14 trips to Washington this year to urge members of Congress to permanently reauthorize the Zadroga bill and have held 300 meetings with members before Wednesday’s rally. “They will remember September 16, not because of a debate tonight, because a bunch of hard-core ass-kicking 9/11 first-responders walked the halls of Congress to fight for the tens of thousands that couldn’t be here,” Feal told supporters.

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Forget the Pope. Donald Trump Is Coming to the Hill

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 10:06:23 -0400

A hugely influential leader is coming to Washington to give the country a sermon about its future. Two weeks later, Pope Francis will be here too.

Donald Trump, perhaps the current spiritual head of the Republican Party, will hit Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a rally opposing the Iran nuclear deal, which is currently being debated in both chambers of Congress. Trump will be joined by radio personality Glenn Beck, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz, in addition to other conservative leaders.

Trump’s speech comes as Congress begins debate on a measure to disapprove of President Obama’s deal with Iran—a resolution which already lacks sufficient support in the Senate, and likely in the House, to withstand a certain presidential veto. Although a majority of members in both chambers support the disapproval measure, just 41 are needed to filibuster a final vote on the measure in the Senate—votes that supporters secured Tuesday morning—while even fewer, just 34 in the Senate and 145 in the House, are needed to uphold a veto.

For Trump, Wednesday marks his greatest foray yet into congressional politics, and comes just as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will begin a talkathon on the Senate floor in which members will be asked to remain in their seats and listen to their colleagues debate the measure.

But it’s unclear whether Trump will meet with members, aside perhaps from Cruz, while in Washington on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign declined to comment for this story and Sen. Jeff Sessions, who is serving as a consultant for Trump’s campaign on immigration, would not say Tuesday whether he planned to meet with the candidate during his Capitol visit.

Several Republican senators said they would be too busy with the Iran debate to attend Trump’s speech Wednesday, but Sen. David Perdue said he would make an effort to be there. The Georgia freshman said that he has not endorsed in the presidential race—and is supportive of “any Republican campaign”—but that he and Trump’s camps have been in talks to try to schedule time for the two to speak.

“Actually, we’re trying to talk tonight,” Perdue said Tuesday. “About the campaign, about what I hope to interject into the presidential dialogue—I’ve had a couple of opportunities at the national level to do that—about our debt, the economy, how to get people working again, things that a lot of candidates are not talking about right now. And tomorrow we’re going to be talking about the Iran deal. So I’m delighted that those people are going to be here tomorrow.”

Wednesday could be a big day for Cruz, who is headlining the rally and personally invited Trump to speak, despite their opposing campaigns for the presidential nomination. The invite—the only one Cruz extended personally to any speaker at Wednesday’s rally, according to The Washington Post—represents another step for the Texas Republican in forging an alliance with the current front-runner in the hopes of absorbing his supporters if (“when,” Cruz’s team would say) the real estate magnate exits the presidential race.

Trump’s speech on Iran will put him on the same page and just a few yards from some of his other opponents for the presidential nomination, Sens. Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham. Graham, a hawk on defense issues, has feuded with Trump for weeks.

Asked about Trump’s visit on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain, Graham’s highest-profile supporter and friend, grimaced. “Whatever he wants to do is fine with me. I know he has an in-depth knowledge and background on the issue.”

Asked whether he was being sarcastic, McCain grinned: “Not at all.”

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McConnell: We Won't Risk a Shutdown Over Planned Parenthood

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 15:36:08 -0400

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was dismissive Thursday of conservative plans to force a vote to defund Planned Parenthood as part of federal-spending negotiations in September, making clear he has no interest in putting the nation on the brink of another government shutdown.

"One of my favorite Kentucky sayings is there's no education in the second kick of the mule," McConnell told reporters Thursday. "We've been down this path before."

McConnell said he would not say what would or would not end up in the short-term spending bill that is due by Sept. 30. But he referenced previous shutdowns, noting that they "always have the same ending, that the focus is on the fact that the government is shut down, not on what the underlying issue that's being protested is."

McConnell has said repeatedly since taking over as majority leader in January that the Republican Congress will not allow future government shutdowns, but Thursday's remarks represent his most direct response to date to conservatives in both chambers who say they will oppose a funding bill unless it defunds Planned Parenthood

"Look, what Planned Parenthood is engaged in is truly outrageous. The videos are beyond disturbing. The question is what is the best way to go forward," McConnell said, noting that the Senate's vote on Monday, though it failed, at least put members on the record.

Sen. Charles Grassley is conducting an investigation into the matter, McConnell noted, adding: "We intend to continue to pursue the facts and nobody's better at that than Chuck Grassley, and we'll look for other opportunities to make our voices heard on Planned Parenthood."

McConnell also reiterated that the Republican Senate will seek concessions in exchange for raising the nation's debt limit later this fall, perhaps as early as October, but did not elaborate. Still, he added, "We're not going to default on the national debt."

(Image via Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com )

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Congress Finally Leaves Town, but a Packed September Awaits

Sarah Mimms and Alex Rogers, National Journal — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 10:40:29 -0400

Senators dropped plans to try to pass a cybersecurity measure and rushed to catch flights out of humid Washington, D.C., on Wednesday afternoon for a five-week August recess. Members will have to rest up, because they're going to return to a messy, jam-packed fall session.

Senators will return to the Capitol on Sept. 8 to begin debate on a resolution to either approve or disapprove of the administration's nuclear deal with Iran. The latter course is more likely, given Republican control of the chamber, but several key Democrats have announced their support just this week. With only nine days to deliberate once Congress returns, neither chamber appears likely to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override President Obama's promised veto of a disapproval resolution.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling for a robust debate process, in which he'll give each senator equal time to speak about the issue on the floor.

That process could provide for some interesting political theater. In a rare request, McConnell is asking that all members stay on the floor and listen to their colleagues for the full debate, cancelling committee hearings and meetings. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Wednesday that she was looking forward to the process, noting that she couldn't recall a debate in which every member sat in the chamber since President Clinton's impeachment trial.

Given the seriousness of the issue and the strong opinions of senators on the Iran deal, the debate is likely to be a tense and lengthy one, leaving members with about two remaining weeks in September to deal with other issues.

The other must-pass bill this September won't be any easier: Congress must approve a new government-funding bill before Sept. 30. Senate Democrats have refused to allow Republicans to bring up a single appropriations bill to fund the government this year, trying to force the majority party to prevent sequestration cuts to nondefense spending next year. Republicans, so far, are not biting. And the House's appropriations process is also stalled, with GOP leaders unwilling to bring up spending measures because they fear Democrats will seek to attach language banning the Confederate flag in federal cemeteries.

As a result, Congress will very likely pass a short-term continuing resolution to buy members more time to deal with real questions about the federal government's spending levels.

But even that is a fraught equation, as several Republicans in both chambers hope to use the process to force another vote to defund Planned Parenthood amid a scandal involving the organization's alleged sale of fetal tissue. A vote to do just that failed in the Senate amid Democratic opposition (all but Sens. Joe Donnelly and Joe Manchin voted against the defunding attempt) earlier this week. If Republicans attach the defunding effort to the funding resolution, Congress will again find itself on the brink of a shutdown.

Facing a take-it-or-leave-it approach promoted by some House conservatives, McConnell reiterated to reporters this week a campaign promise he made in 2014: "No more government shutdowns."

When asked if he could support a spending bill that also funded Planned Parenthood, Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn indicated that the 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare wasn't far from his mind.

"I'm for doing what's doable," he said, noting that Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson have begun investigations into the allegations. "I'm not for going in any box canyons. We tried that before [and] that didn't work very well."

The Senate is also expected to take up the cybersecurity bill again in September, following an agreement between the two party leaders on Wednesday, but with Iran and the continuing resolution dominating the Senate's schedule, the timing will be tight. Unlike those issues, however, there is no deadline for the cybersecurity bill, and McConnell and Minority Leader Harry Reid agreed Wednesday to bring up the bill at a time of the majority leader's choosing, whether that be in September or later into the fall if the schedule dictates it.

The September rush will be followed by a similar calendar in October, when Congress will have to pass another highway funding bill; the legislation passed just last week expires on Oct. 30. And the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Congress will have to increase the debt-ceiling limit, a perennial congressional battle, in either October or November.

(Image via Felix Lipov / Shutterstock.com)

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Joe Biden's New Mission: Selling the Iran Deal

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 10:16:18 -0400

It's a familiar pattern: President Obama has a complicated deal he needs to get through Congress, so he sends Vice President Joe Biden to the Hill to sell it.

Just a day after he announced a potentially legacy-ensuring nuclear agreement with Iran, Obama once again dispatched Biden, his favorite emissary, to spearhead a difficult lobbying effort. With the Obama presidency winding to a close and Biden publicly undecided on whether to run for the top job himself, the Iran talks could prove to be one of Biden's most important—and potentially one of his last—acts in politics.

And while Biden has often been tapped in the past to take advantage of his friendly relationships with Senate Republicans, this time his mission is focused on persuading his fellow Democrats.

Republicans in both chambers are already balking at the deal, so a resolution of disapproval that could kill the Iran deal seems likely to pass both chambers. Obama has vowed to veto such legislation, but he'll need cooperation from at least 146 Democrats in the House and another 34 in the Senate to uphold that veto.

Given his foreign policy bona fides, Biden is working as the administration's ambassador to the Hill to ensure that those votes are there.

After Obama alerted congressional leaders of the pending deal on Monday night, the vice president hopped on the phones early Tuesday morning, speaking with Senate leadership and a handful of rank-and-file members who will be key to getting the deal through Congress. Wednesday morning, Biden made the trip in person to Capitol Hill to spend quality time with House Democrats, and he will meet Thursday with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Sen. Christopher Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he spoke with Biden by phone for about 30 minutes on Tuesday and asked the vice president a series of questions about inspection provisions, restraints on the research and development of centrifuges, and lifting of an arms embargo—all concerns that have been raised by Republican opponents and on-the-bubble Democrats alike. On the arms embargo, Coons said Biden gave a "very helpful insight" that a "specific piece of sanctions" enacted while the former senator was Foreign Relations chairman would remain in place.

Coons said he isn't surprised that the White House has tapped Biden to take the lead in convincing Democrats who, like himself, remain undecided on the Iran deal.

"The vice president is one of the most seasoned and senior leaders in national security and foreign policy in our country, and so I would expect that he would be centrally involved in educating, briefing, engaging members of the Senate," Coons said. "He's also one of the most trusted senators, as someone who has had a long and strong relationship with our allies in the region, so if I were giving the administration advice I would certainly recommend that they call on the vice president to play a central role in engaging and educating senators."

Biden also spoke on Tuesday with Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking member on the Foreign Relations panel, who will be key in cobbling together Democratic votes to uphold the Iran deal—that is, assuming he backs it himself.

Cardin said one of his outstanding concerns relates to the lifting of the arms embargo after five years, including "how they got into the discussions and what impact it has on arming of certain different entities, and how it affects U.S. sanctions on the arms embargo."

Although he is publicly undecided on the Iran agreement, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker said that he'd spoken with Biden "multiple" times before the deal was announced, but that the vice president had not called to lobby him to support the deal. "I think they know I'm a facts guy. I mean, I want to understand the deal. Sort of aw-shucks lobbying isn't my thing," Corker said. "We talk with each other when we need to talk with each other. ... But I would guess they would be doing sort of the aw-shucks lobbying effort more right now with Democrats. I want to understand the essence of the deal itself, and those things don't really shed light on that."

And while Biden received applause at his meeting with House Democrats on Tuesday, members said that his pitch was mostly policy-focused and didn't appear to have immediately swayed many lawmakers into the White House's camp. "The vice president made as convincing an argument as he can make, but I think there's still a lot of questions to be answered," said Rep. Steve Israel. "I've been skeptical from the beginning of this. I'm still skeptical. … He did as good a job as he could do under the circumstances."

But Biden's campaign is far from over. Many members said that while they'd heard from the vice president and other members of the administration, they had a lot more reading and research to do before they make a decision and they expect to have many more questions for Biden and the White House before then.

Sen. Brian Schatz, who said he has not yet heard from Biden personally, praised the vice president as "the perfect point-person for this," noting: "He's persuasive and he has knowledge. He's got great bipartisan relationships and he has impeccable credentials when it comes to support for Israel and knowledge of the security needs in the region."

But, Schatz added, Biden isn't alone in his lobbying campaign.

A small group of Senate Democrats earned invitations to the White House on Wednesday afternoon for a 90-minute briefing from staff on the deal, including Sens. Al Franken, Martin Heinrich, and Joe Manchin. Sen. Tammy Baldwin was also invited to the meeting, but had a scheduling conflict.

Heinrich and Manchin both sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will hold hearings on the deal. "They went over everything and explained to us how we got to where we are today, and everything they're doing," Manchin said.

The West Virginia Democrat said he appreciates the White House's outreach, calling the briefing "informative.

"It helps us because I'm looking for a pathway to basically have any stability, any peace, whatsoever," Manchin said.

Secretary of State John Kerry is also expected to be instrumental in securing support for the deal he helped to craft in Vienna. Kerry will testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee next week. Kerry will also appear before the Senate Foreign Relations panel next Thursday, along with Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

Kerry has been hitting the phones since early Tuesday morning, along with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and other administration officials and Cabinet members.

Sen. Tim Kaine said he'd spoken with Blinken in an early Tuesday morning phone call, as administration officials reached out to some senators to brief them on the plan.

"I had a long talk with Tony, which I really appreciated," Kaine said. "He answered a lot of my questions, but I had not read the document when I had the conversation with him, so now that he's kind of given me his pitch and answered questions, now I'm reading the document to try to reach my own conclusions."

The administration says it's keeping all options open as it works to sell the Iran deal to Congress. "As we have done throughout this negotiation, and as this Administration has committed to, we will continue to have conversations with Members of Congress—on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the Capitol—to demonstrate directly to them that this good deal will effectively cut off all of Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon," a White House official said in an email. "We will continue to host briefings, make calls, and testify at hearings to continue to make the case to Congress and the American people."

Alex Brown, Alex Rogers, and Rachel Roubein contributed to this article.

(Image via Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com)

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Congressional Democrats Don't Trust Iran, But Do They Trust Obama?

Sarah Mimms and Alex Brown, National Journal — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 10:46:54 -0400

Democratic skeptics of the administration's nuclear deal with Iran have made it abundantly clear that they don't trust the Iranian government. The question—one they'll have to answer in two months' time—is whether they trust President Obama and his assurances that the deal is the best way to block the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

For the vast majority of Republicans in both chambers, that answer was an almost immediate "no," and the party spent much of Tuesday morning and afternoon tweaking opposition messaging against the deal. For now, most Democrats say they're reserving judgment until they've given the deal a thorough review, leaving the White House with few hard-line allies to fight back in the messaging wars.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Ben Cardin said he isn't worried about Democrats taking their time to make a decision on the deal, but was critical of Republicans for jumping the gun Tuesday. "This took two years of negotiations, plus they've been in active negotiations; I would hope it takes more than two hours to reach a decision here," Cardin said.

Cardin said Democrats who have been reluctant to jump on board with the administration's deal out of the gate are right to "keep their options open" before they've heard both sides. "I think we should take a look at it and we should be willing to at least read the agreement, hear from the administration, hear from experts. Whether we ultimately support or not support, I think we have a responsibility to understand," Cardin said.

Cardin himself is taking his time with the deal, saying that he still has several questions on human rights, the arms embargo, the ballistic-missile program, and other areas of the agreement that he needs to look at before making a final decision.

And Cardin is hardly alone.

"I for one go into it skeptical, but also believe that I have an obligation to review every noun, every verb, every paragraph, and every clause in this before making a final judgment," former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Steve Israel said Tuesday. "I go into this skeptical, I have been skeptical, and I'm not going to make a final decision until that skepticism is fully relieved."

Under a bill passed in May, Congress now has the ability to register its disapproval of the deal, though any attempts to block it would likely need the two-thirds majority required to overcome a presidential veto. Assuming that most Republicans oppose the deal, stopping it would still require about 45 Democrats in the House and 13 in the Senate.

Israel is far from the only Democrat with lingering concerns. "Verification is going to be very critical," House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said. "Without verification, this is a useless agreement. Without verification that's meaningful and effective, it's not an agreement that I can support." Hoyer said he expected the 60-day review period before Congress votes on the deal to shed light on such concerns, and he urged each member to give the proposal a careful reading.

While most congressional Democrats played wait-and-see, Obama did have one important ally in the Capitol on Tuesday morning. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attending previously scheduled meetings with Democrats in both chambers, gave the plan her backing. "I think we have to look at this seriously, evaluate it carefully, but I believe based on what I know now, this is an important step," she told reporters after the meeting. Obama called Clinton late Monday night to brief her on the deal.

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the vice chairwoman of the powerful Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that she will support the deal. "This is a strong agreement that meets our national security needs and I believe will stand the test of time. I stand behind the U.S. negotiating team and will support this agreement in the Senate," Feinstein said.

House Democrats inside a meeting with Clinton on Tuesday morning said the former secretary of State's support was far from tepid. "She endorsed it full-throated," Rep. Gerald Connolly said. "She was not equivocal at all in her support of the agreement as she understands it."

Clinton's stance on the issue, Israel said, carries a lot of weight, second only to Obama. "There's no question that her opinion is critically important, profoundly important," he said.

For now, though, Clinton's support does not have many Democrats rushing to back the deal. "I come to this with a great deal of distrust for the Iranian government, and as [Clinton] said, an existential threat that it poses not only to the state of Israel, but to all of our friends in the region and to our friends in Europe and the United States as well," said Rep. Joseph Crowley, vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "[I'm] certainly hoping that the agreement is something I can support if it puts out of reach of the Iranian people to create nuclear weapons."

House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Eliot Engel added: "I remain uncomfortable with the fact that we have spent so much time negotiating with a country that opposes our interests in so many ways across the region." Engel expressed concern that lifting sanctions on Iran could allow it to further destabilize the region.

Sen. Christopher Coons, another Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was also highly skeptical Tuesday, but emphasized that he and his colleagues have a lot of reading and research left to do before making any final decision.

"Iran has certainly earned our distrust. So I begin the process of reading and reviewing this historic agreement with a position of suspicion and distrust of Iran and their intentions going forward," Coons said. "And as a result, I am more-than-ever concerned that we have a strong and durable verification and inspection regime, that we have sanctions that can snap back significantly and meaningfully if—or I should say when—Iran cheats on this deal."

Other high-profile Democrats were in no hurry to take a position. "[A]ny deal must ensure that Iran can never achieve their goal of developing a nuclear weapon," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, in a statement. "As I have said from the beginning, no deal is better than a bad deal, particularly given Iran's horrific track record of deception and continued facilitation of terrorism against the United States and our allies worldwide."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a statement commending the White House's efforts to find a diplomatic solution, but shied away from pronouncing the deal a favorable one. "Congress will closely review the details of this agreement," she said.

Similarly, Caucus Chair Xavier Becerra said members are waiting to see the text. "We should be prepared to read it all, to make sure that what we're reading is what we're hearing, so that we can have confidence of moving forward."

Ultimately, though, some think Democrats will have little choice but to back the deal. "[Vice President Joe] Biden's coming over tomorrow to sway us in one direction," Rep. Brad Sherman said. "It will be hard to sway us in the other direction, because you've got Obama and Hillary and Democratic activists around the country all on one side. ... The two problems in overriding a veto are every Democratic institution is saying not to and there's no crisp answer to 'and then what?' "

While leadership has mostly avoided weighing in, the plan did garner endorsements from a few progressives Tuesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate, called the deal a "victory for diplomacy over saber rattling." Rep. Barbara Lee, one of the most outspoken anti-war members of Congress, hailed it as well. "Today's announced deal with Iran, if fully implemented, will prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon while ensuring greater stability in the Middle East," she said.

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The Must-Pass Highway Bill Dominates Jammed July

Sarah Mimms, National Journal — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 11:07:35 -0400

With a month-long recess looming in August, Congress is going to try to pack as much as possible into July.

In the next three weeks, members will have to contend with several pieces of must-pass legislation, meet a July 31 deadline to fill the nation's Highway Trust Fund, and lay the groundwork for even more critical legislation due in the early fall.

The House plans to take up two appropriations bills during its remaining summer stint in D.C., funding the Department of the Interior and filling the coffers for financial services, the White House, and a handful of other related agencies. Passing those two bills will get the House a third of the way through its appropriations process before the August recess, giving the lower chamber just three weeks to deal with eight additional bills—and coordinate passage through the Senate—before the government's funding runs out on Sept. 30.

The Senate is much further behind and has not passed a single appropriations bill yet this year. Whether the upper chamber will attempt to pass any of the 12 spending bills in July is unclear, given the current stalemate between the two parties. Democrats have not backed off their vow to block each of them until Republicans agree to raise the coming sequestration on nondefense programs. Given that each of the 12 appropriations bills takes about a week in the Senate, the upper chamber is already running short on time, raising the likelihood of a last-minute omnibus spending bill to prevent a government shutdown this fall.

In the meantime, the Senate will take up education legislation revising No Child Left Behind as its first act of the July session. The bipartisan bill, coauthored by Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray, looks likely to pass. But the House will revive its own, much more conservative version of the education legislation during this session as well, likely leading both chambers to conference.

The only true deadline this session is July 31, when the nation's Highway Trust Fund—which gives federal funding to states to build and maintain roads and other infrastructure projects—runs dry.

With just three weeks to find a solution, neither chamber seems to have made much progress. Many in the Senate are pushing for a multi-year solution, with bipartisan legislation out of the Environment and Public Works Committee calling for a six-year extension, but the Senate's Finance Committee has yet to announce how it would be paid for. The House, meanwhile, appears to be moving toward another short-term patch, the third in the last year.

Complicating matters further, Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate plan to attach a bill reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank's charter as an amendment to the highway bill, orperhaps some other legislation. That won't go over well with House conservatives, who have been pushing to wind down the bank for years and praised its expiration on July 1. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised his members a vote to reopen the bank's doors sometime this month, and it's clear that there are enough votes in the upper chamber to pass it.

But it's unclear what House Speaker John Boehner, who opposed letting the bank expire abruptly, will do. Boehner has kept mum, telling reporters last month that the House would wait on the Senate before deciding what to do. The bank was not mentioned in House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's list of upcoming legislation for the July session.

The Senate could also see action on a forthcoming U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, which is set to be released to Congress by July 9, setting off a 30-day review period in the Senate on one of the most contentious issues the upper chamber has handled this year. If the administration misses that deadline, however—which is a possibility, given that negotiators this week announced they'll have to extend talks through July 7—senators will have 60 days to review the final accord whenever it comes through.

Both chambers will also begin conferences to resolve their differences on the National Defense Authorization Act as well as a customs-enforcement bill.

(Image via Tom Biegalski/Shutterstock.com)

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