Lawmakers returning from a weeklong recess lack the bipartisan agreement needed to keep the government funded past a Dec. 3 deadline and raise the nation’s borrowing limit by Dec. 15, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned her department would run out of money to repay loans.
The two deadlines come ahead of a Christmas target Senate Democrats set for themselves to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social welfare and green energy spending bill unilaterally, even as a pair of centrist party lawmakers may not fully support the passage.
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, acknowledged this week that the pre-Christmas agenda would be difficult thanks to the partisan divide and the Democrats’ internal divisions.
“To me, it’s an old song,” Klobuchar said on ABC’s This Week. “The song is a little less talk and a lot more action. That’s what we’ll need in this next month.”
However, Democrats are hobbled by razor-thin majorities and the Senate, where at least 10 Republicans will be needed to advance legislation to extend government funding or lift the debt ceiling.
So far, the GOP doesn’t plan to cooperate unless the two parties can agree on extending temporary government funding well into 2022, rather than the Dec. 17 extension Democrats are floating. But Republicans won’t contribute the 10 votes needed to raise the debt ceiling, GOP leaders have warned, unless Democrats agree to measures aimed at reining in government spending.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has held private talks with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, on finding a path to raise the debt ceiling. But so far, there is no deal and only two weeks left to meet Yellen’s deadline.
Meanwhile, Democrats plan to pass the $1.75 trillion spending measure in the Senate unilaterally by the end of the month using a special budgetary tactic to eliminate a GOP filibuster. But that means they will need all 50 Senate Democrats to agree to the bill so Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the tiebreaking vote.
House Democrats passed the measure earlier this month, sending it to the Senate without a single Republican vote.
The bill faces possible changes to win over Senate centrists Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Manchin said he’s concerned that the measure’s high cost will fuel rising inflation and that new subsidies and entitlements will discourage work. The West Virginian may also seek changes in the green energy provisions that aim to end fossil fuel use and prop up far less reliable renewables.
One provision Manchin could target calls for an $8 billion tax on methane that could drastically raise already climbing natural gas prices.
Manchin may also seek to impose means-testing or work requirements on some of the new government programs and subsidies.
The House-passed measure also faces the prospect of changes by the Senate parliamentarian, who could force Democrats to remove a provision legalizing more than 6 million illegal workers for the bill to comply with special rules eliminating the GOP filibuster.
Democrats are expected to continue negotiating behind the scenes in the Senate, beginning this week as lawmakers return from the Thanksgiving break.
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The Senate will begin chipping away the long to-do list with the National Defense Authorization Act, a major spending and policy bill postponed earlier this month.
It typically enjoys broad bipartisan support, which Klobuchar said could facilitate cooperation on government spending and the debt ceiling. If not, the GOP will be blamed for the fiscal crisis Yellen warned would ensue if the nation runs out of money to pay its bills, Klobuchar told ABC.
“If the Republicans want to scrooge out on us and increase people’s interest rates and make it hard to make car payments, go ahead, make that case,” Klobuchar said. “We’re going to stop them from doing that.”
