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September 8, 2023
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Friday morning.
The Senate is getting ready to do something it hasn’t done in several years — debate appropriations bills on the floor under regular order.
This will kick off what’s expected to be a very difficult appropriations season for Congress, with a government shutdown more likely than not at this point. It’ll be House Republicans versus the Senate and the White House, and no one is sure how it all will get resolved.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has teed up a Monday procedural vote that will allow the chamber to move forward on the Senate’s version of the FY2024 MilCon-VA, Agriculture and Transportation-HUD bills. These Senate measures have billions of dollars more in funding than their House GOP-drafted counterparts.
The Senate bills also lack the “culture war” provisions that the House Appropriations Committee approved on party lines, under pressure from conservatives.
Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee respectively, plan to spend the next two weeks shepherding the package through the Senate. There will be amendment votes, and in the end — they hope — solid bipartisan support for the three-bill package.
“My hope is that we can have an open debate [with] robust, germane amendments offered. I’m not sure how long this will take,” Collins told us. “It’s really hard to tell now [what the big issues will be] because although the language has been out there for months on these bills, I’m not sure that people have really focused yet on that.”
Already, Senate GOP leaders are insisting that there must be a robust amendment process in order for Republicans to vote to get on the bill. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told us he’ll offer an amendment aimed at balancing the federal budget, for example.
“All I can tell you is our conference is really dug in” on having amendments, Senate Minority Whip John Thune told us. “There will be all kinds of amendment ideas, some of which are germane to the bill, some of which probably aren’t.”
Even some Democrats, such as Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, said they may offer amendments to the minibus. For Schatz, it depends on how disaster relief is dealt with, although it looks like the issue will be addressed as part of the stopgap funding bill that will be taken up by month’s end. Schatz said it could take multiple rounds of funding to help Maui recover from August’s deadly wildfires.
Regardless of how the amendment process plays out, the result of this will be a largely bipartisan funding package that stands in stark contrast to the House’s approach, which has been far more partisan. For instance, none of the House Appropriations Committee’s bills got any Democratic support. On the other hand, all three of these bills got through the Senate Appropriations panel unanimously.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said the House is “doing lots of very entertaining things that have nothing to do with actually legislating.” And Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) put it more bluntly.
“The best thing they could do is to take all the work the Senate does and just pass it,” Tester said. “Because we do better work. I say this partially in jest, but it’s a fact… We shouldn’t be playing games like shutting down the government. That’s bullshit.”
The House’s funding bills come in much lower than the topline agreed to as part of the debt-limit deal, which has frustrated some Senate Republicans, too. That’s especially true for the Agriculture funding bill. Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the Senate’s approach was more prudent, and House Republicans are “going to do what they’re going to do.”
The House is expected to take up the massive $886 billion defense spending bill next week. GOP leadership aides and House Freedom Caucus members went over roughly 300 potential amendments on Thursday. The following week, Homeland Security and State-Foreign Ops bills could hit the floor — if House Republicans can agree on spending levels. For instance, the State-Foreign Ops bill has been cut back to the 2016 level, and that still may not be good enough for conservative hardliners.
But House Republicans know that if they don’t pass something, they will get rolled by the Senate in the year-end negotiations.
There’s also the lingering issue of Ukraine aid. As we scooped on Thursday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is eyeing attaching disaster relief funding to the stopgap spending bill at the end of the month, leaving Ukraine aid out. McCarthy and his leadership team are mulling using the Ukraine funding as leverage to extract concessions from the White House on border-related policies and funding.
This approach isn’t flying with the Senate, where there’s strong support on both sides still for funding Ukraine’s military. All week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pushing back against what he calls the “faulty” arguments from some Republicans about cutting off assistance for Ukraine. Schumer is aligned with McConnell on this.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a top McConnell ally and a supporter of Ukraine aid, said that if the House sends over a bill that doesn’t include assistance for Kyiv, he has confidence that the Senate will tack it on and send the bill back to the House. This, of course, sets up a potential government shutdown.
“I understand whatever [McCarthy] needs to do to pass a bill,” Cornyn told us. “But I think he also understands it’s going to come back to him with [Ukraine aid] in it, from the Senate. We’re going to have to work that out.”
— John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio
Today in North Dakota: Punchbowl News founders Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman sit down with Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) at 12:30 p.m. CT/1:30 p.m. ET in Bismarck, N.D. They’ll discuss challenges facing small business owners in rural America. Afterward, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon will join Anna and Jake for a fireside chat. You can RSVP and watch online today.
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THE SENATE
Warren pushes Dems to get more aggressive on Tuberville blockade
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been among the loudest critics of Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) unprecedented blockade of senior military promotions.
Now, Warren thinks it’s time for her party to turn up the heat.
During a closed-door Democratic lunch on Wednesday, the progressive urged her party’s leadership to get more aggressive in pushing back on Tuberville and GOP leaders, according to two people who witnessed the exchange. Her comments were mostly directed at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, these sources said.
A spokesperson for Warren declined to comment. A Schumer spokesperson said Democratic senators are “totally united in our belief that this is a Republican created problem and Senate Republicans have the responsibility to get Sen. Tuberville to back down.”
On Thursday morning, Warren was continuing to call for Democratic leaders to do more, at one point suggesting an effort to pursue a rules change. This, of course, would require GOP support — unless Democrats go with the so-called “nuclear option.” That means using the 51-vote majority to create a new rule. That’s almost certain to fail in this case.
Schumer has been using floor speeches and other means to pressure Republican leaders to rein in Tuberville — to little avail. Warren is clearly pressing for more.
“We have got to stand up and continue to talk about this,” Warren said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I will tell you this from talking about it with my Democratic colleagues. There is no dissension.”
There are also signs that the dispute with Tuberville is growing personal. Warren added in her MSNBC interview that Tuberville “deserves every ugly term that gets thrown at him.”
Warren has gone to the Senate floor several times already in an effort to break the logjam, at one point even reading the names and biographies of some of the more than 300 senior officers whose promotions are being blocked by Tuberville.
Some Democrats have openly suggested that Schumer should start going through the procedural motion of filing cloture on some of the higher-level promotions. But Schumer insists that this would lead to even more chaos in the Senate, signaling to other senators that they, too, can resort to this tactic in the future.
Complicating matters further: The four-year term of Gen. Mark Milley, current chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expires on Oct. 1. This means that if the Senate doesn’t confirm his replacement, Gen. C.Q. Brown, by then, President Joe Biden will be without a Senate-confirmed top military adviser.
Schumer has already said he won’t put Brown’s nomination on the floor until Tuberville relents, arguing it’s unfair to “shift the burden to Democrats when this is a Republican-caused problem.”
Democrats believe this could force Republicans to exert pressure on Tuberville to end his blockade. But Tuberville has said he won’t back down, telling us earlier this week: “Well, we won’t have [a Joint Chiefs chair] then.”
Warren’s decision to speak out in front of her colleagues in this setting reflects the deep anger and frustration Democrats feel about the entire situation, which is only mounting the longer Tuberville’s holds persist.
— John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio
PRESENTED BY CITI
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IMPEACHMENT WATCH
Conservatives oppose tying impeachment inquiry to spending fight
Some House conservatives are warning against tying an impeachment inquiry to the appropriations fight, arguing that cutting government spending must remain the bottom line.
“They’re totally separate issues and should be considered separately,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “The number one responsibility of the House is to manage the nation’s finances, the nation’s fiscal situation and to appropriately fund the essential activities of our government.”
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said he supported an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden but that it was a different issue from the spending battle.
“Not sure tying them together is the right approach,” Ogles told us. “Impeachment should stand on its own merits. That said, it is past time to impeach [Joe Biden.]”
In a tweet this week, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) warned GOP leadership that promising an impeachment inquiry won’t make up for other demands Republican hardliners are already making in the funding fight.
And in an interview, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said he wanted to see quicker movement on a possible impeachment inquiry, but cutting spending is the most important issue that members should focus on right now.
“Spending is the number one priority to save our country,” Burchett told us. “Inflation is just out of control and people are struggling. They’re making more money than they ever have, but it’s costing more to live.”
How it started: Several high-profile Republicans have stepped up their calls to impeach Biden over the recess, particularly as more details about Hunter Biden’s business dealings become public.
Devon Archer, a former business associate of the president’s son, testified that Hunter Biden put the then-vice president on speaker phone when meeting with business partners. While this revealed a larger role that Biden played in his son’s dealings than previously known, Archer said no business was discussed on these calls.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced at a town hall last week that she was demanding an impeachment inquiry into Biden in exchange for supporting a stopgap funding bill.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) also stirred up renewed interest in impeachment this week, telling conservative radio host Todd Starnes that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs to ramp up impeachment proceedings or risk being ousted as speaker.
GOP pushback: In addition to Good, Burchett and Ogles, here’s what Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) told NBC News’s Ryan Nobles this week.
“I don’t think that evidence has been presented,” Buck said. “And I don’t think there’s a need to have an impeachment inquiry when we have three committees that are doing great work developing the kind of evidence that could lead to an impeachment inquiry.”
And as we reported Thursday, House GOP hardliners have found little support among Senate Republicans for threatening a shutdown or demanding twinning and impeachment inquiry with government funding.
Gaetz has said he may try to remove McCarthy as speaker if he does not allow an impeachment vote. But it’s clear that there is real skepticism in the House about impeachment.
— Mica Soellner
THE CAMPAIGN
News: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC is endorsing Raquel Terán to succeed Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in Congress. Terán is the former minority leader of the Arizona State Senate and has served as an immigrant rights community organizer.
“[Terán] fights against Republican extremism that threatens our democracy and she could make history as the first Latina representing Arizona in Congress, that is why BOLD PAC is proud to endorse her,” BOLD PAC Chair Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) said in a statement.
Gallego, the former chair of the CHC BOLD PAC, is running for Senate in Arizona. Gallego’s district is a heavily blue seat almost certain to remain in Democratic hands.
— Max Cohen
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