The U. S. Senate plans to vote on House-approved legislation that funds the military through September and then vote on spending for the rest of the government.
Feb. 6 (UPI) — The U. S. Senate plans to vote on House-approved legislation that funds the military through September and then vote on spending for the rest of the government in a bid to avoid another shutdown.
But unlike the House — which needed only a simple majority to approve the measure — the Senate requires 60 votes, meaning help is needed from Democrats because the Republicans only have a 51-49 edge in the upper chamber. Last month, the government closed and nonessential services ceased for three days when members of the two parties couldn’t agree to a deal.
“The Senate will take up an uncontroversial measure that passed the House with a comfortable bipartisan majority,” Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Tuesday .
Democrats are expected to reject the House’s defense bill because they want to address all funding questions at the same time.
“As I’ve said many times before, a cromnibus will not pass the Senate,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York said Tuesday.
Schumer told reporters he had a “good meeting” with McConnell.
On the Senate floor Monday, Schumer said: “We want to fund defense, absolutely. We want to fund programs to help the middle class too, like education, like infrastructure, like scientific research. We’re standing up and saying we must do both.”
The House is scheduled to take up a separate stopgap bill that funds most of the government through March 23, before the current stop-gap spending resolution expires at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
“Everyone understands that this will probably end up being a ping-pong situation” of legislation flip-flopping between the House and Senate, Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida said Monday night. “And we’ll see where the ball lands.”
Conservative House Republicans now back a spending bill through March because the military is funded through the fiscal year.
Last month, Senate Democrats agreed to keep the government running for two and a half weeks after ending their holdout to address the status of 800,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. They supported a short-term spending bill that didn’t address immigration because McConnell promised he would allow debate on immigration legislation.
In addition, Congress needs to raise the borrowing limit in March. The Congressional Budget Office said last week the limit will be reached earlier than projected because of less revenue from the $1.5 trillion tax cut. The current level is $20.5 trillion.
